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Table Traits 
With Something on Them 


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BY 


JOHN DORAN, LL.D. 







IN TWO VOLUMES 






Vouiume I, 







PUBLISHED BY 
FRANCIS A. NICCOLLS & CO 
BOSTON 





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Limited to One Thousand 


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Contents 


avira th Sect 

PAGE 
THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON . : : ‘ : I 
DIET AND DIGESTION . : : : : ; : 9 
WATER . . : : ; . , é : eas 
BREAKFAST . ‘ . ° : : : : ee 2O 
THE OLD COFFEE - HOUSES , : : nenaty Ae: 
THE FRENCH CAFES . ; , : Ol 
THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIs hee ; ; : a 8808 
THE MODERN COOK, AND His SCIENCE . : PLES 
PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME . é i val at 
DINNER TRAITS . : ; : ‘ : : tae 
THE MATERIALS FOR DINING . ; : : So ays 
SAUCES. ; : ; ; : : : “ 220 
Moai TARASITE 5): . ; : t ee 
THE TABLES OF UTOPIA AND THE GOLDEN res 200 
TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES. Peres? 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY . ; 5300 





Table ‘Traits 
With Something on Them 


—— 


The Legend of Amphitryon 


A PROLOGUE 


“Le véritable Amphitryon est ’Amphitryon ot l’on dine.” — 
MOLIERE. 


Amone well-worn illustrations and similes, there 
are few that have been more hardly worked than the 
above line of Poquelin-Moliere. It is a line which 
tells us, pleasantly enough, that he who sits at the 
head of a table is among those “respectable” powers 
who find an alacrity of worship at the hands of man. 
I say, “‘at the hands ;” for what is “adoration” but 
the act of putting the hand to the mouth (as ex- 
pressed by its components ad and os, oris), and what 
worship is so common as that which takes this form, 
especially when the Amphitryon is amiable, and his 
altar well supplied ? 

But such a solution of the question affords us, 
after all, no enlightenment as to the mystery of the 


reality of Amphitryon himself, whose name is now 
I 


2 TABLE TRAITS 


worn, and sometimes usurped, by those who preside 
at modern banquets. Was he real? Is he a myth? 
Was he ever in the body, or is his name that of a 
shadow only, employed for purposes of significance? 
If real, whence came he? What does classic story 
say of the abused husband of Alcmena ? 

Amphitryon was a Theban gentleman, who had 
two nephews, fast young men, who were slain by the 
Teleboans. This isa myth. They were extravagant 
individuals, of the class of those who count the 
chimes at midnight. Their father could not help 
them ; and so the uncle, a bachelor, was expected to 
do his avuncular office, spend his substance for the 
benefit of his brother’s children, and get small thanks 
for his trouble. His brother, however, had an article 
of small value, —a daughter, named Alcmena; and 
this lady was given in marriage to her uncle, without 
any scruple about the laws of affinity. As soon as 
the ceremony of the betrothal was over, Amphitryon 
departed to punish the Teleboans; and he had not 
been long absent, when Jupiter presented himself in 
the likeness of the absent husband, set up a house- 
hold with the readily convinced Alcmena, and became 
the father of Hercules. When Amphitryon returned, 
his surprise was natural, and his ill-temper not to be 
wondered at. But Jupiter explained the imbroglio 
in a very cavalier way, as was his custom, and which 
they who are curious may see in the liveliest of the 
lively comedies of the miller’s man, Plautus. 

An incident connected with the story shows us 
that Amphitryon, fond of good living generally, and 
of beef in particular, made a razzia among the Tele- 
boan herds, and brought back all the cows and oxen 


THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON 3 


he found amongst them. He was exhibiting the 
cattle to his brother Electryon, when one of the ani- 
mals strayed from the herd; and Amphitryon, in 
order to bring it back, flung a stick at it, but with 
such violence, that the weapon, falling on the horns, 
rebounded as violently upon Electryon, who died 
upon the spot. But this, too, is a myth; and I have 
no doubt but that Electryon died of indigestion ; for 
the Teleboan beef was famous for its toughness. 
Indeed, many of the Teleboés themselves were so 
disgusted with it, that they abandoned their A*tolian 
homes, and settled in the island of Caprez. 

The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. 
They boast that his dinners at Memphis were divine, 
and that Hercules, his son, was among the last-born 
of the gods; for Hercules was more than a hero 
among the leek-worshippers of Egypt. But the truth 
is, that the story of Amphitryon, his strength, his 
good fare, and his hard fate, belongs to a more distant 
period and land. It is a Hindoo story, the actors 
are children of the sun, and Voltaire declares that 
the tale is to be found in Dow’s “ Hindostan;” but 
that is as much of a fable as the legend itself of 
Amphitryon, whose name, by the way, may be as 
easily “Indicised” as that of Pythagoras. 

In Scotland, the crime of child-stealing is distin- 
guished by the title of “plagiary;’’ and an instance 
of the latter is here before us. When Plautus sat in 
his master’s mill, and thought over the subject of his 
lively comedy, founded on the story of Amphitryon, he 
took for granted all that he had been told of his hero’s 
birth and parentage. But the classical Amphitryon 
is, as I have said, but a stolen child. His home is 


4 TABLE TRAITS 


in the far East ; and his history was calling up smiles 
upon the faces of listeners by the Indus long before 
the twin founders of Rome had been entrusted, by 
their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The Hindoo Am- 
phitryon was a fellow of some renown, and here is 
his story. 

A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended 
to us, — but he was the individual whom the Greeks 
stole, and called Amphitryon,—lived many years 
ago. He was remarkable for his gigantic strength 
and stature; and he not only found the former a 
good thing to possess, but he used it like a giant. 
He had for the wife of his bosom a fair, but fragile, 
girl, who lay in his embrace, as she sang to him at 
sunset, ‘like Hebe in Hercules’s arms.” It was not 
often, however, that such passages of peace embel- 
lished the course of their daily life. The Hindoo was 
jealous, and his little wife was coquettish. The lady 
had smiles for flatterers ; and her monster of a hus- 
band had a stick, which showered blows upon her 
when he detected her neglecting her household work. 
Cudgelling took its turn with caressing, as it did in 
the more modern, and consequently more vulgar, 
case of Captain Wattle and Miss Roe; and finally 
there was much more of the first than there was of 
the last. One summer eve, the husband, in a fit of 
frantic jealousy, assaulted his wife so ferociously, 
that he left her insensible on the threshold of their 
house, and threatened never again to keep up a 
ménage with so incorrigible a partner. 

A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order, —not the 
king of gods and men, as in the Grecian legend, — 
had witnessed the whole proceeding from his abiding- 


THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON 5 


place in a neighbouring cloud. He smiled as the 
husband disappeared; and, gradually descending in 
his little palace to the ground, he lightly leaped on 
to the firm-set earth, gave a hurried glance at the 
unconscious and thickly bruised beauty, and then, in 
testimony of his ecstatic delight, he clapped his 
hands, and commenced revolving on one leg, as 
D’Egville used to do, when Venua’s violin led the 
orchestra, and gave him strength. 

The spirit, having subsided into repose, thought 
for awhile, and speedily arrived at a resolution. It 
infused itself into a human body, which was found 
without difficulty, and it clothed the whole under the 
counterfeit presentment of the errant husband. These 
feats of transmutation were common among the 
Eastern deities; and I take for granted that my 
readers are aware that Pythagoras himself — who is 
connected with table traits, on the subject of beans 
—was no other than Buddha Goroos, who slipped 
into a vacant body, and taught the metempsychosis 
to wondering Europe. 

The wife of the Hindoo giant was something as- 
tonished, on recovering herself, to find that she was 
seated, without any sense of pain, on a bench in the 
little garden, with her apparent. husband at her feet, 
pouring out protestations of love and assurances of 
fidelity. She accepted all, without questioning, for 
it was all too pleasant to be refused. A new life 
commenced. The married pair became the admiring 
theme of the village; and when a son was born to 
them, there ensued such showers of felicitations and 
flowers as had never fallen upon married lovers since 
the Hindoo world first started on its career, on the 


6 TABLE TRAITS 


back of the self-supporting elephant. Their moon 
never ceased to shed honey; and this was flowing, 
sweetly and copiously as ever, when, one sultry noon, 
the vagrant husband returned home, and, confronting 
the counterfeit at an inner door, bitterly satirised the 
vanity of women who indulged in capricious tempers 
and Psyche glasses. In an instant, however, he was 
conscious that his other self was not a reflection, but 
only the cause of many that began crowding into the 
brain of the true man. The cool complacency of the 
counterfeit irritated the bewildered and legitimate hus- 
band, and an affray ensued, in which the mortal got all 
the blows, and his rival all the advantage. The wife 
was herself perplexed, but manifested a leaning to- 
ward the irresistible divinity. In vain did the gigan- 
tic original roar forth the tale of his wrongs, and claim 
his undoubted rights; and it was only during a lull 
in the storm that he heeded a suggestion made, to 
the effect that all the parties should submit their 
case to the judgment of an inspired Brahmin. 

This eminent individual speedily perceived that, of 
the double man that stood before him, one was a 
dupe, and the other a deity, something, at all 
events, above humanity. The question was, how to 
discover the divinity. After much cogitation, this 
was the judgment pronounced by the dusky Solo- 
mon: “Madam,” said he to the perplexed lady, 
“your husband was known as being the most robust 
man ever made out of the red earth, of which was 
composed the father of us all. Now, let these two 
litigants salute you on the lips, and we pronounce him 
to be the true man who comes off with the loudest 
report.” The trial took place forthwith in presence 


THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON 7 


of the assembled multitude. The Indian mortal first 
approached the upraised lips of his wife, and he per- 
formed the required feat with an echo that was as half 
a hundred culverins to the “ pistol-shot’”’ kiss recorded 
of Petruchio. The judge and the people looked curi- 
ously to the defendant, as wondering how, on the 
pretty instrument before him, he could strike a note 
higher than his rival. The Indian god addressed 
him to what seemed a rosebud wet with dew; and 
therewith ensued a sound as though all the artillery of 
the skies were saluting, too, in honour of the achieve- 
ment. The multitude and the Brahmin looked, for 
all the world, as if they had lost their hearing ; and it 
was calculated that the astounding din might have 
been heard by the slumbering tortoise below the 
antipodes. At length, the assembly hailed the deity 
as the undoubted Simon Pure, and looked toward the 
Brahmin for confirmation of their award; but the 
Brahmin merely remarked to them, with urbanity, 
that they were the sons and fathers of asses, and 
were unable to distinguish between the almost invisi- 
ble seed which diets the bird of paradise, and the 
gigantic palm of the garden of the gods, each leaf of 
which is of such extent that an earthly courser, at his 
utmost speed, could not traverse it in fifty millions of 
mortal-measured years. ‘Here is the true husband,” 
added the judge, putting his hand upon the shoulder 
of the Indian, “who has done all that human being, 
in the particular vocation required, could do; and 
here,” added he, turning reverentially to the other, 
“ig some supreme being, who has been pleased to 
amuse himself at the expense of his servants.” 

The god smiled, and confessed to the excellence of 


8 TABLE TRAITS 


the judge’s perspicuity by revealing himself in his 
true, and somewhat operatic, form. He ascended the 
cloud, which appeared in waiting for him like an aérial 
cab, and, looking from over its side, laughingly bade 
the edified multitude farewell, adding, that he was the 
deity appointed to preside at tables that were not un- 
graced by the fair; and, “if these have a cause for 
complaint, it is my privilege to avenge them accord- 
ing to my good pleasure.” The ladies thereupon 
flung flowers to him as he rose, and the husbands 
saluted his departure with rather faint cheers; but 
throughout India, while orthodoxy lasted, there never 
was a table spread, but the master thereat, prince or 
peasant, invoked the Hindoo deity to cast the beams 
of the sun of his gaiety upon the board. Heresy, 
however, in this matter, has crept in; and, if Hindoo 
feasts lack real brilliancy, it is because the sunlight 
of the god no longer beams from the eyes of the fair, 
who are no longer present sharers in the banquet. 
It is otherwise in Europe, whither, perhaps, the god 
came, and aped Jupiter, as well as Amphitryon, when 
he perplexed the household of Alcmena. He sits 
presiding at our feast, ensconced within a rose; from 
thence his smiles urge to enjoyment, and the finger 
on his lip to discretion ; and every docile guest whis- 
pers sab vosd, and acknowledges the present god. 

It is said in India, that this divinity was the one 
who gave men diet, but forgot digestion. It was like 
giving them philosophical lectures, without power to 
understand them; and the case is still common 
enough upon earth. These subjects demand brief 
notice, were it only by way of appendix to this 
prolegomenical chapter. 


Diet and Digestion 


“No digest of law’s like the law of digestion.” — Moore. 


Our good neighbours the French, or rather, the 
philosophers among them, have asserted that the per- 
fecting of man and his species depends upon atten- 
tion to diet and digestion ; and, in a material point of 
view, they are not far wrong; and, indeed, in a non- 
material point of view, it may be said that the spirit, 
without judgment, is very likely to be exposed to in- 
digestion ; and perhaps ignorance complete is to be 
preferred to an ill-digested erudition. With diet and 
patience, Walpole thought all the diseases of man 
might be easily cured. Montesquieu, on the other 
hand, held that health purchased by rigorously watch- 
ing over diet, was but a tedious disease. But Wal- 
pole was nearly correct, while Montesquieu was not 
very distant from the truth. Dieting, like other 
things, must be undertaken on common sense prin- 
ciples ; for, though there be multitudes of mad peo- 
ple in the world, society generally is not to be put 
upon the régime of “ Bedlam.” 

We live, not by what we eat, but by what we 
digest ; and what one man may digest, another would 
die of attempting. Rules on this subject are almost 
useless. Each man may soon learn the powers of 
his stomach, in health or disease, in this respect ; and . 

9 


10 TABLE TRAITS 


this ascertained, he has no more business to bring on 
indigestion than he has to get intoxicated or fall into 
debt. He who offends on these three points, de- 
serves to forfeit stomach, head, and his electoral 
franchise ! | 

Generally speaking, fat and spices resist the diges- 
tive power; and too much nutritious food is the next 
evil to too little. Good cookery, by developing 
flavour, increases the nutritiousness of food, which 
bad cookery would perhaps render indigestible. 
Hence a good cook rises to the dignity of “artist.” 
He may rank with the chemists, if not with the phy- 
sicians. 

Animal food, of mild quality, is more digestible 
than vegetable, and fresh meats are preferable to 
salted. In the latter the salt is a different com- 
position from that which is taken at meals, and 
which is indispensable to health. Fish fills rather 
than feeds; but there are exceptions to this. Vege- 
tables are accounted as doing little to maintain 
stamina; but there have been races and classes of 
men who have been heroes upon bread, fruit, and 
vegetables. The poor cannot live upon “curry,” it 
is true; but in England, with less drink and more 
vegetable food, they would be an improved race. 
Not that they could live like a Lazzaroni on maca- 
roni and the open air. Layard says the Bedouin owes 
his health and strength to his spare diet. But even 
a Bedouin swallows lumps of butter till he becomes 
bilious ; and were he to live in England instead of 
the desert, he would not keep up his strength by 
living on the dishes which support him in Arabia 
Felix. The golden rule is “moderation and regular- 


DIET AND DIGESTION II 


» 


ity.” He who transgresses the rule, will pay for it 
by present suffering and a “check” after Christmas. 

A false hunger ought not to be soothed, nor a 
false thirst to be satisfied; for satisfaction here is 
only adding fuel to a fire that would otherwise go 
out. On the other hand, the bilious and sedentary 
man need not be afraid of beer; it is a better sto- 
machic than wine. For him and for all lords of that 
heritage of woe, a weak stomach, the common sense 
system of cookery, as it is called, is most required. 
It is something between the hard, crude system of 
the English, and the juice-extracting method of the 
French ; with a leaning, however, toward the latter 
(with whom it is common to reduce food to a condi- 
tion of pulp), but uniting with it so much of the 
English custom as allows the gelatinous matter to 
be retained, especially inthe meats. “ Festina lente,” 
is “ Latin de cutsine,”’ for “ Eat slowly,” and it is of 
first-rate value. He who does so, gives best chance 
for healthy chyle; and that wanting, I should like to 
know where the postprandial enjoyment would be. 
Without it, digestion is not; and when digestion is 
away, death is always peering about to profit by his 
absence. ‘See to it!’’ as the Chinese “chop” says. 

There are upwards of seventeen hundred works 
extant on the subject of diet and digestion. Suffer- 
ers may study the question till they are driven mad 
by doubt and dyspepsia, and difference of opinions 
among the doctors. Fordyce saw no use in the 
saliva, and Paris maintains that without it digestion is 
not. “Quot homines, tot sententiz,” is as applicable 
here as in every other vexed question. But Paris’s 
book on “ Diet” is the safest guide I know for a man 


12 TABLE TRAITS 


who, being dyspeptic, wants to cure himself, or simply 
to discover the definement of his degree of suffering. 
On the other hand, every man may find comfort in 
the reflection, that with early hours, abundant exer- 
cise, generous diet, but not too much of it, and 
occupation, — without which a worse devil than the 
former enters on possession of the victim, — dyspep- 
sia cannot assume a chronic form. It may be a 
casual visitor, but it will be the easiest thing possible 
to get rid of him. But philosophy has said as much 
from the beginning, and yet dyspepsia prevails and 
physicians ride in carriages. Exactly! and why? 
Because philosophers themselves, like the stoic gen- 
tleman in Marmontel, after praising simplicity of” 
living, sink to sleep, on heavy suppers and beds of 
down, with the suicidal remark, that ‘Le luxe est 
une jolie chose.” 

We must neither act unreservedly on the dictum 
of books, nor copy slavishly the examples of others, 
if we would have the digestion in a healthy condi- 
tion. There is a self-monitor that may safely be 
consulted. Of his existence there can be no doubt; 
for every man who wakes with a headache most 
ungratefully blames that same monitory “self.” 

If any class may fairly complain of others in this 
respect, rather than of themselves, it is the “babies.” 
The Rajpoots do not slay half so many of their in- 
fants out of pride, as we do by indiscreet dieting ; 
or, to speak plainly, overfeeding. The New Zealand 
mother is not more foolish, who thrusts stones down 
the throat of her babe, in order to make him a stern 
and fearless warrior, and only mars him for a healthy 
man. And Christian matrons have been quite as 


DIET AND DIGESTION 13 


savage without intending it. Brantome’s_ uncle, 
Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned than, by the 
advice of a Neapolitan physician, he took gold, steel, 
and iron (in powders), mixed up with all he ate and 
drank. This regimen he followed until he was twelve 
years old, by which time (we are asked to believe) it 
had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild 
bull in full course. This diet, however, seems little 
likely to have produced such an effect. As soon 
might one expect that the Bolton ass, which chewed 
tobacco and took snuff, was made swift as a race- 
horse by so doing. I think that it is of Dean Nowell 
it is said, that he grew strong by drinking ale. He 
was the accidental inventor of bottled ale. He 
was out fishing with a bottle of the freshly drawn 
beverage at his side, when intelligence reached him 
touching the peril his life was in, under Mary, which 
made him fly, after flinging away his rod, and thrust- 
ing his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could 
again safely resort to the’ same spot, he looked for 
his bottle, which, on being disturbed, drove out the 
cork like a pellet froma gun, and contained so 
creamy a fluid, that the dean, noting the fact and 
rejoicing therein, took care to be well provided with 
the same thenceforward. As Henry II. was the first 
king who acted as sewer, and placed the boar’s head 
on the table of his young son, just crowned, so Dean 
Nowell was the first church dignitary who laid the 
foundation of red noses by bringing bottled ale to 
the notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, 
that what this ale used to do for churchmen, cider 
used to effect for Africans. 

As we have said, “moderation” is the first princi- 


14 TABLE TRAITS 


ple of digestion; and as, according to the Latin 
proverb, “ water gives moderation,” it behooves us to 
look for a few minutes into the much praised, and 
little appreciated, agua pura. 


Water 


A KENtTucky man, who was lately at one of the 
great tables in an hotel in the States, where the 
bill of fare was in French, after sorely puzzling him- 
self with descriptions which he could not compre- 
hend, “‘cotelettes a la Maintenon” and “wufs a la 
braise ;”’ exclaimed, “I shall go back to first princi- 
ples: give me some roast beef!”’ So, after speaking 
of the birth of him, whose putative father has lent a 
name to liberal hosts, let us also fall back upon first 
principles, and contemplate the uses of water. 

There is nothing in nature more useful; but, com- 
monly speaking, you can neither buy anything with 
it, nor get any article for it in exchange. Adam 
Smith strikingly compares with it the uselessness and 
the value of a diamond: the latter has scarcely any 
value in use, but much that is valuable may be had in 
exchange for it. In the desert a cup full of water is 
worth one full of diamonds; that is, in certain emer- 
gencies. The diamond and the water illustrate the 
difference between value in use and value in exchange. 

If water be not, according to Pindar and the legend 
over the Bath Pump-room, the best of things, few 
things would attain to excellence without it. Greek 
philosophy was not wrong which made it the principle 

15 


16 TABLE TRAITS 


of life, and the popular belief scarcely erred in seeing 
in every stream, spring, and fountain a resident deity. 
Water was so reverenced by certain ancient nations, 
that they would never desecrate it by purifying them- 
selves therewith! The ancient Persians and Cappado- 
cians exemplified their devotion by personal dirtiness. 
In presence of the visible power of the stream, altars 
were raised, and adoration paid to the god whose 
existence was evidenced by such power. The Egyp- 
tians gave their divine river more than prayers, be- 
cause their dependence on it was more absoluté than 
that of other nations on their respective streams. 
The Nile, swelling beneficently, -bestowed food, health, 
and therewith content on the Egyptians ; and they, 
in return, flung gratefully into the stream corn, 
sugar, and fruit. When human sacrifices were made 
to rivers, it was probably because the river was 
recognised as giving life, and was worthy of being 
paid in kind. We may smile superciliously at this 
old reverence for the “liquid good,’ but there was 
connected therewith much that we might profit- 
ably condescend to copy. Greece had her officers 
appointed to keep her streams pure. Had those 
officials exposed the people to drink such: indescrib- 
able matter as we draw from the Thames, they would 
have been thrown into it by popular indignation. In 
Rome, Ancus Martius was long remembered, not for 
his victories, but for his care to supply the city with 
salubrious and sufficient water ; and if people gener- 
ally cursed Nero for his crimes, they acknowledged 
that he had at least not damaged the public aque- 
ducts; and that in his reign ice-houses were first 
built, the contents of which enabled thousands to 


WATER 17 


quaff the cool beverage which is so commendably 
spoken of by Aristotle. 

The fountains were the ornaments of the public 
places, as the crystal ampulla, with its slender neck 
and its globular body, was of the sideboards of 
private houses in Rome. The common people drank 
to excess, both of hot water and cold; the former 
they drank in large measures — this was in winter, 
and in taverns where they fed largely upon pork, and 
drank the water as a stimulant! The Emperor 
Claudius looked upon this regimen as an immoral in- 
dulgence, and he closed the taverns where proprietors 
injured the public stomach by such a diet. Some 
Romans were so particular as to boil the water they 
intended to drink, in vessels at their own table. 
They were like the epicures who never entrust the 
boiling of an egg to their own cooks. We may notice 
that Augustus employed it lavishly, both as a bather 
and drinker. The “faculty”? were unanimous in 
recommending a similar use of it, and some of these 
gentlemen made considerable fortunes by the various 
methods of applying it. For instance, patients re- 
sorting to Charmis, to take cold baths in winter under 
his direction, were required to pay him a consulting 
fee of £800! He was the first “ water-cure”’ doctor 
that ever practised, and he realised a fortune such as 
his successors may aim at in vain. 

Horace Walpole, forgetting what he had once 
before said, namely, that diet and patience formed the 
universal panacea, declared that his “great nostrum 
was the use of cold water, inwardly and outwardly 
on all occasions, and that with disregard of precau- 
tion against catching cold. I have often,” he con- 


18 TABLE TRAITS 


tinues, “had the gout in my face and eyes, and 
instantly dip my head in a pail of cold water, which 
always cures it, and does not send it anywhere else.” 
And again, alluding to another use of water, he says 
sneeringly, ‘‘ Whether Christianity will be laid aside 
I cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is left, the 
forms, I think, signify very little. Surely, it is not 
an age of morality and principle; does it import 
whether profligacy is baptised or not ?” 

With regard to the sanitary application of water, as 
noticed by Walpole, there can be no doubt but that 
diet and digestion proceed the more perfectly, as the 
ablution of the body is general and daily, and made 
with cold water. But discretion must be used ;. for 
there are conditions of the body which cannot endure 
cold bathing without palpitation of the heart follow- 
ing. In such case, tepid water should be used for a 
time, when the palpitations will soon cease, unless 
the heart be organically affected. 

The same writer’s remarks on the Christian uses 
of water, remind me of what is said of some such 
uses in Weever’s “ Funeral Monuments.” He cites 
the inscriptions that used to be placed over the holy 
water in ancient churches. Some deposed that the 
sprinkling of it drove away devils : 


“ Hujus aque tactus depellit damonis actus.” 


Others promised a blessing, as, for example: 


‘«« Asperget vos Deus cum omnibus sanctis suis ad vitam 
eternam.”’ 


Another implied, that six benefits arose from its use ; 
namely : 


WATER 19 


«« Sex operantur aqua benedicta : 
Cor mundat, accidiam (?) fugat, venalia tollit, 
Auget opem, removetque hostem, phantasmata pellit.” 


Homer, too, it will be recollected, speaks of the 
sound of water inspiring consolatory thoughts, in the 
passage where he describes one “suffering cruel 
wounds from a diseased heart, but he found a 
remedy; for, sitting down beneath a lofty rock, 
looking down upon the sea, he began to sing.” 

The dormitories of many of the old convents were 
adorned with inscriptions recommendatory of personal 
cleanliness; but the inmates generally were more 
content with the theory than the practice: they 
were, in some degree, like the man at Bishop-Middle- 
ham, who died with the reputation of a water-drinker, 
but who really killed himself by secret drunkenness. 
He praised water in public, but drank brandy in pri- 
vate, though it was not till after death that his delin- 
quency was discovered. 

The use of water against the spells of witchcraft 
lingered longer in Scotland than elsewhere. The 
Strathdown Highlander even now, it is said, is not 
ashamed to drink “the water of the dead and living 
ford,” on New Year's Day, as a charm to secure him 
from sorcery until the ensuing New Year. 

St. Bernard, the abbot, made application of water 
for another purpose. Butler says of him, that he 
once happened to fix his eyes on the face of a 
woman, but immediately reflecting that this was a 
temptation, he ran to a pond, and leaped up to the 
neck into the water, which was then as cold as ice, 
to punish himself, and to vanquish the enemy! 


20 TABLE TRAITS 


There is a second incident connected with water, 
_ that will bear to be told as an illustration, at least, of 
old times. When Patricius was Bishop of Prusa, the 
Proconsul Julius resorted thither to the famous baths, 
and was restored to such vigorous health thereby, 
that he not only made sacrifice of thanksgiving to Es- 
culapius and health, but required the bishop to follow 
his example. The prelate declined, and the procon- 
sul ordered him to be thrown into a caldron of boil- 
ing water, by which he was no more affected than if 
he had been enjoying a bath of tepid rose-water. 
Whereupon he was taken out and beheaded. The 
power that kept the water cool did not interfere to 
blunt the axe. ; 
We have seen the reverence paid by certain 
“ancients of old” to the supposed divinities whose 


crystal thrones were veiled beneath the waves. Men 


under a better dispensation have shown, perhaps, a 
worse superstition. Bede makes mention of a monk 
who thought he would purify his sin-stained spirit by 
actual ablution. He had, the church historian tells 
us, a solitary place of residence assigned him in the 
monastery, adjacent to a river: into the latter he 
was accustomed to plunge, by way of penance to his 
body. He went manfully to the bottom, and his 
mouth was no sooner again in upper air, than it was 
opened to give utterance to lusty prayer and praise. 
He would sometimes thus stand for hours, up to the 
neck, and uttering his orisons aloud. He was in full 
dress when this penance was performed, and, on com- 
ing from the stream, he let his wet and sometimes 
frozen garments dry upon his person. A friar, once 
seeing him break the ice, in order that he might 


WATER 21 


make his penitential plunge, expressed shiveringly 
his wonder at the feat: “It must be so very cold,” 


said the friar. ‘I have seen greater cold,” was the 
sole remark of the devotional diver. ‘Such austerity | 
I never beheld,” exclaimed another spectator. “I 


have beheld far greater,’ replied the monk. “ And 
thus,” adds the historian, as simply as any of them, 
“thus he forwarded the salvation of many by his 
words and example.” 

Connected with a pious man of our own time, I 
may mention an incident touching water which is 
rather remarkable: the person to whom I allude is 
Bishop Gobat, of Jerusalem. He states, in his last 
annual letter, that he is building a school which will 
cost him about 4600: the school is not yet finished ; 
but the water used for mixing the mortar has already 
cost the enormous sum of £60. It is, in fact, a lux- 
ury which must be paid for. Where it is so dear, it 
were well if the people never were thirsty ; and there 
were such people of old. 

The late Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir Lancelot 
Shadwell, was as indefatigable a bather as the monk 
noticed by Bede. Every morning throughout the 
year, during his residence at Barnes Elms, he might 
be seen wrestling joyously with the Thames. It is 
said that, on one occasion, a party in urgent need of 
an injunction, after looking for the judge in a hun- 
dred places where he was not to be found, at length 
took boat and encountered him as he was swimming 
in the river. There he is said to have heard the 
case, listening to the details as the astonished appli- 
cants made them, and now and then performing a 
frolicsome “summersault,” when they paused for 


22 TABLE TRAITS 


want of breath. The injunction was granted, it is 
said, after which the applicants left the judge to con- 
tinue his favourite aquatic sport by himself. 

If the late amiable and able vice-chancellor was a 
water-lawyer, so was the late Archdeacon Singleton a 
water-divine. When tutor to the young Lords Percy, 
he and the eldest of the sons of the then Duke of 
Northumberland — Hugh, Earl Percy — were expert 
swimmers, and often, by their achievements, excited 
the admiration of less daring venturers. The arch- 
deacon was accustomed to float away for miles from 
Sion, depending upon the tide to float him back again. 
At first, many a boatman looked inquiringly at the 
motionless body carrying on with the stream; but, 
when he was better known, his appearance thus ex- 
cited no more surprise than if he had been in an 
outrigger, calmly taking a pull before the hour of 
dinner. 

With respect to water-drinkers, they seem to have 
abounded among the good old heathens, of whom so 
many stories are told that we are not called upon to 
believe. 

Aristotle, who, like Doctor Macnish, wrote an 
«Anatomy of Drunkenness”’ (IIept Mé@ys), states 
therein that he knew, or had heard, of many people 
who never experienced what it was to be thirsty. 
Archonides, of Argos, is cited by him as a man who 
could eat salt beef for a week without caring to drink, 
therewith or thereafter. Mago, the Carthaginian, is 
famous for having twice crossed the desert without 
having once tasted water, or any other beverage. The 
Iberians, wealthy and showy people as they were, were 
water-drinkers; and it was peculiar to some of the 


~ 


WATER 23 


Sophists of Elis, that they lived upon nothing but 
water and dried figs. Their bodily strength, which 
was great, is said to have been the result of such diet, 
but, it is added, that the pores of their skin exuded 
anything but a celestial ichor, and that whenever they 
went to the baths, all the other bathers fled, holding 
their offended noses between their fingers! Matris, 
of Athens, lived all his life upon myrtle-berries 
and water; but, as nobody knows how long he did 
live, it would be rather rash to imitate him in hopes 
of obtaining extension of existence. Lamprus, the 
musician, was a water-drinker, as were Polemon, 
the academician, and Diocles, of Peparethus; but as 
they were never famous for anything else, they are 
hardly worth citing. It is different when we con- 
trast Demosthenes with Demades. Demosthenes 
states, in his second “Philippic,”’ that he was a 
water-drinker ; and Pytheas was right, when he bade 
the Athenians remark that the sober demagogue was, 
like Doctor Young, in fact, constantly engaged in 
solemn night thoughts. ‘“ Not so your other dema- 
gogue, Demades,” said Pytheas; “he is an unclean 
fellow who is daily drunk, and who never comes into 
your assemblies but to exhibit his enormous paunch.” 
Such was the style of election speeches in Greece; 
and it has a smack of the hustings, and, indeed, of 
the market too, in Covent Garden. 

To turn from old to modern mythology, I may 
notice that water entered into the old sports of St. 
Distaff’s Day, or the morrow after Twelfth Day. It 
is thus alluded to by one whose “mind was jocund, 
but his life was chaste,’ —the lyric parson of Dean 
Priors : 


24 TABLE TRAITS 


‘“‘ Partly work and partly play 
Ye must, on St. Distaff’s Day. 
From the plough soon free your team, 
Then come home and fother them. 
If the maids a-spinning go, 
Burn the flax, and fire the tow, 
Scorch their plackets, but beware 
That ye singe no maiden-hair. 
Bring in pails of water then, 
Let the maids bewash the men. 
Give St. Distaff all the right, 
Then bid Christmas sport ‘ Good night ;’ 
And next morrow ev’ry one 
To his own vocation.” 


When Herrick wrote these lines, I do not know 
how it may have been at Dean Priors, but London 
was but indifferently supplied with water. But now 
London is supplied with water from eight different 
sources. Five of them are on the north, or Middle- 
sex, side of London, three on the Southwark and 
Surrey side. The first comprise the New River, at 
Islington; the East London, at Old Ford, on the 
Lea; the West Middlesex, on the Thames, at Brent- 
ford and Hammersmith; and the Chelsea and Grand 
Junction, on the same river, at Chelsea. The south 
side is entirely supplied from the Thames, by the 
Southwark, Lambeth, and Vauxhall Waterworks, 
whose names are descriptive of their locality. 

The daily supply amounts to about thirty-five mil- 
lions of gallons, of which more than a third is supplied 
by the New River Company. The original projector 
of this company was Sir Hugh Myddelton, who pro- 
posed to supply the London conduits from the wells 
about Amwell and Ware. The project was com- 





« 


WATER 25 


pleted in 1613, to the benefit of posterity and the 
ruin of the projector. The old hundred-pound shares 
are now worth ten times their original cost. 

In 1682 the private houses of the metropolis were 
only supplied with fresh water twice a week. Mr. 
Cunningham, in his “ Handbook of London,” informs 
us that the old sources of supply were the Wells, or 
Fleet River, Wallbrook and Langbourne Waters, 
Clement’s, Clerk’s, and Holy Well, Tyburn, and 
the River Lea. Tyburn first supplied the city in the 
year 1285, the Thames not being pressed into the 
service of the city conduits till 1568, when it sup- 
plied the conduit at Dowgate. There were people 
who stole water from the pipes then, as there are 
who steal gas now. “This yere” (1479), writes an 
old chronicler of London, quoted by Mr. Cunning- 
ham, “a wax-charndler in Flete Strete had bi craft 
perced a pipe of the condite withynne the ground, 
and so conveied the water into his selar; wherefore 
he was judged to ride thurgh the citee with a condite 
upon his hedde.”” The first engine which conveyed 
water into private houses, by leaden pipes, was 
erected at London Bridge, in 1582. The pipes were 
laid over the steeple of St. Magnus; and the engi- 
neer was Maurice, a Dutchman. Bulmer, an Eng- 
lishman, erected a second engine, at Broken Wharf. 
Previous to 1656, the Strand and Covent Garden, 
though so near to the river, were only supplied by 
water-tankards, which were carried by those who sold 
the water, or by the apprentice, if there were one in 
the house, whose duty it was to fill the house-tankard 
at the conduit, or in the river. In the middle of the 
seventeenth century, Ford erected water-works on 


26 TABLE TRAITS 


the Thames, in front of Somerset House; but the 
queen of Charles II. —like the Princess Borghese, 
who pulled down a church next to her palace, because 
the incense turned her sick, and the organ made her 
head ache — ordered the works to be demolished, 
because they obstructed a clear view on the river. 
The inhabitants of the district depended upon their 
tankards and water-carriers, until the reign of William 
III., when the York Buildings Water-works were 
erected. The frequently occurring name of Conduit 
Street, or Conduit Court, indicates the whereabout 
of many of the old sources whence our forefathers 
drew their scanty supplies. 


Water is not necessarily unhealthy, because of a ~ 


little earthy matter in it; mineral, or animal, or 
vegetable matter held in it, by solution, or otherwise, 
renders it decidedly unwholesome. Rain-water is the 
purest water, when it is to be had by its natural dis- 
tillation in the open fields. When collected near 


towns, it should never be used without being pre- . 


viously boiled and strained. 

The hardness of water is generally caused by the 
presence of sulphate of lime. Horses commonly 
refuse to drink hard water, —a water that can make 
neither good tea, nor good beer, and which frequently 
contains many salts. Soft water, which is a powerful 
solvent of all vegetable matters, is to be preferred for 
all domestic purposes. River water is seldom pure 
enough for drinking. Where purest, it has lost its 
carbonic acid from long exposure; and in the neigh- 
bourhood of cities it is often a slow poison, and noth- 
ing more, scarcely to be rescued from the name by 
the process of filtration. London is still supplied, at a 


WATER 27 


very costly price, with water which is “offensive to 
the sight, disgusting to the imagination, and destruc- 
tive to the health.’ Thames water, as at present 
flowing into our houses, is at once the jackal and 
aid-de-camp of cholera. People are apt to praise it, 
as being the water from which is made the purest 
porter in the world; but it is a well-known fact, that 
the great London brewers never employ it for that 
purpose. 

The more a spring is drawn from, the softer the 
water will become; hence old wells furnish a purer 
water than those which are more recent; but a well 
of soft water is sensibly hardened by a coating of 
bricks. To obviate this, the bricks should be coated 
with cement. Snow-water deserves a better reputa- 
tion than it has acquired. Lake water is fitted only 
for the commonest household detergent purposes. 
But the salubrity of water is converted into poison 
by the conveyances which bring it almost to our lips ; 
_ and we have not yet adopted in full the recommenda- 
‘tion of Vitruvius and Columella to use pipes of 
earthenware, as being not only cheaper, but more 
durable and more wholesome, than lead. We still 
convey away refuse water in earthenware, and bring 
fresh water into our houses in lead! The noted 
choleraic colic of Amsterdam, in the last century, was 
entirely caused by the action of vegetable matter in 
the water-pipes. 

Filtration produces no good effect upon hard water. 
The sulphate of lime, and still more the supercar- 
bonate of lime, are only to be destroyed by boiling. 
Boiled water, cooled, and agitated in contact with the 
atmosphere, before use, is a safe and not an unpleas- 


28 TABLE TRAITS 


ant beverage. It is essential that the water be boil- 
ing when “toast and water” is the beverage to be 
taken. 

Water, doubtless, is the natural drink of man — in 
a natural state. It is the only liquid which truly 
appeases thirst ; and a small quantity is sufficient for 
that effect. The other liquids are, for the most part, 
palliatives merely. If man had kept to water, the 
saying would not be applicable to him, that “he is 
the only animal privileged to drink, without being 
thirsty.” But, then, where would the medical pro- 
fession have been? 

But he does well who, at all events, commences 
the day with water and prayer. With such an one > 
we go hand in hand, not only in that service, but, as 
now, to breakfast. 





Breakfast 


SwirT lent dignity to this repast, and to laun- 
dresses partaking of it, when he said, in illustration of 
modern epicureanism, that ‘the world must be 
encompassed before a washerwoman can sit down to 
breakfast.”’ 

Franklin, who made a “morality” of every senti- 
ment, and put opinions into dramatical action, has a 
passage in some one of his essays, in which he says 
that “Disorder breakfasts with Plenty, dines with 
Poverty, sups with Misery, and sleeps with Death.” 
It is an unpleasant division of the day, but it is truly 
described, as far as it goes. On the other hand, it 
is not to be concluded that Disorder is the favourite 
guest of Abundance; and I do not know any one who 
has described a plentiful breakfast, with regularity 
presiding, better than another essayist, though one of 
a less matter-of-fact quality than Franklin, — I mean 
Leigh Hunt. In the /udicator he invites us to a 
« Breakfast in Cold Weather.” ‘“ Here it is,’’ he says, 
“ready laid. Imprimis, tea and coffee; secondly, 
dry toast; thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs; fifthly, 
ham ; sixthly, something potted; seventhly, bread, 
salt, mustard, knives, forks, etc. One of the first 
things that belong to a breakfast is a good fire. 
There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the 
snug, in coming down to one’s breakfast-room of a 

29 


30 TABLE TRAITS 


cold morning, and seeing everything prepared for us, 
—a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea-things ; 
the newly washed faces and combed heads of a set 
of good-humoured urchins ; and the sole empty chair, 
at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. 
When we lived alone,” he adds, “we could not help 
reading at meals; and it is certainly a delicious thing 
to resume an entertaining book, at a particularly in- 
teresting passage, with a hot cup of tea at one’s 
elbow, and a piece of buttered toast in one’s hand. 
The first look at the page, accompanied by a co- 
existent bite of the toast, comes under the head 
of ‘intensities.’’’ Under the head of “etc.” in the 


above list, I should be disposed to include “sun- | 


shine ;” for sunshine in a breakfast-room in winter, is 
almost as glorious a thing as the fire itself. Itisa 
positive tonic; it cheers the spirits, strengthens the 
body, and promotes digestion. As for breakfast in 
hot weather, all well-disposed persons who have gar- 
dens take that meal, of course, in “the arbour,” and 
amid flowers. Breakfasts, a/ fresco, are all the more 
intensely enjoyed, because so few may be discussed 
in the open air in a country whose summer consists 
of “three hot days and a thunder-storm;” and in a 
climate wherein, according to Boerhaave, people 
should not leave off their winter clothing till mid- 
summer day, resuming the same the next morning 
when they are dressing for breakfast! Walpole and 


Boerhaave are right ; our summers do sometimes set 


in with extraordinary severity. 

The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn 
of day, required a strong head to bear it. It con- 
sisted of bread soaked in wine. If princes were in 


ad 7 
ind ye. - * eas a * 5 ‘ ™ é - — oT - . 
sie a a ee ee ee ee ee ee a ee ee “ iM, 


BREAKFAST 31 


the habit of so breaking their fast, we hardly need 
wonder at the denunciation in Ecclesiastes against 
those who eat in the morning. The Greek patricians 
sat daily down to but one solid meal. Soldiers and 
plebeians had less controllable appetites, and these 
could not be appeased with less than two meals a day. 
They were accounted peculiarly coarse people who 
consumed three. The Romans were, in this respect, 
similar to the Greeks. Fashionable people ate little or 
nothing before the hour when they compensated for 
a long fast by a daily meal, where they fed hugely. 
A simple breakfast, as soon as they awoke, of “ bread 
and cheese,” has a very unclassical sound; but good 
authority assures us, that it was a custom duly hon- 
oured with much observance. Not of such light fare, 
however, was the breakfast of Galba. Suetonius says 
that the old emperor used to cry for his morning 
repast long before daybreak. This was in winter 
time. He took the meal in bed, and was probably 
induced to do so by indisposition ; for he was a huge, 
ogre-like supper-eater, — eating much, leaving more, 
and ordering the remains to be divided among the 
attendants, who duly, rather than dignifiedly, scram- 
bled for the same. 

Modern epicures would hardly approve some of 
the dishes half consumed by the hungry Galba at 
breakfast ; but potentates of our own days have made 
their first meal upon very questionable matter. 

When Clapperton, the African traveller, break- 
fasted with the Sultan of Baussa, which is a collec- 
tion of straggling villages on the banks of the Quorra, 
among the delicacies presented were a large grilled 
water-rat, and alligators’ eggs, fried or stewed. The 


32 TABLE TRAITS 


company were much amazed at the singularity of 
taste which prompted the stranger to choose fish and 
rice in preference to those savoury viands. The 
prince, who gave this public breakfast in honour of 
a foreign commoner, was disgusted at the fastidious 
super-delicacy of his guest. In the last century 
our commoners used to give similar entertainments 
in honour of princes. bs 

“ /Klia Lelia”? Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the 
famous lady who was still more famous as Duchess 
of Kingston, gave splendidly untidy entertainments 
of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. Her 
suppers will be found noticed in another page. In 
1763, she gave a concert and vast cold collation, or 
“breakfast,” in honour of Prince Edward’s birthday. 
The scene is admirably painted by Walpole. “The 
house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with 
finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabi- 
nets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one 
another’s backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures, 
filigrees, and everything upon earth! Every favour 
she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden 
china. There is a large case full of enamels, eggs, 
ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, toothpick cases, and all 
kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her 
playthings. Another cupboard full of the finest 
japan, and candlesticks, and vases of rock-crystal, 
ready to be thrown down in every corner. But of all 
curiosities are the conveniences in every bedcham- 
ber ; great mahogany projections, with brass handles, 
cocks, etc. I could not help saying it was the loosest 
family I ever saw.” 
There was a philosopher of the same century, at 





BREAKFAST 33 


whom even Walpole dared not have sneered. I allude 
to Doctor Black, whom Lavoisier called “the Nestor 
of the Chemical Revolution.” Doctor Black was 
famous for the frugality of his breakfasts, and for the 
singularity of his death, when seated at that repast. 
His usual fare was a little bread, a few prunes, and a 
measured quantity of milk and water. One morning 
in November, 1799, he was seated at this modest meal. 
His cup was in his hand, when the Inevitable Angel 
beckoned to him, and the Christian philosopher calmly 
obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, “which 
were joined together, and kept it steady with his 
hand, in the manner of a person perfectly at his ease ; 
and in this attitude he expired, without a drop being 
spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if 
an experiment had been required, to show to his 
friends the facility with which he departed.” There 
was neither convulsion, shock, nor stupor, we are 
told, to announce or retard the approach of death. 
This was a more becoming end than that of another 
chemist, the younger Berthollet, — although in the 
latter there was something heroical, too. He had 
taken his last breakfast, when he calmly proceeded 
to a sacrifice which he made to the interests of 
science. He destroyed his life by enclosing himself 
in an atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he began 
registering all the successive feelings he experienced, 
which were such as would have been occasioned by 
a narcotic ;— “a pause, and then an almost illegible 
word occurred. It is presumed that the pen dropped 
from his hand, and he was no more.” 

I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. 
I must have recourse to Mr. Forrester’s “ Norway in 


34 TABLE TRAITS 


1848 and 1849,” to show what a breakfast for a 
traveller should be; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir- 
about, with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Sucha 
breakfast, he says, will not only fortify the traveller 
for a lengthened period, but to the sedentary, the 
bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adoption will afford 
more relief than the best prescription of a physician. 
But this breakfast must be prepared with due care, 
and this is the fashion of it: “Take two or three 
handsful of oatmeal; I prefer it of mixed coarse and 
fine meal, in the proportion of one-third of the latter 
to two of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of 
cold water, and pour it into a saucepan containing | 
about a quart of boiling water; add a small portion 
of salt. Set the saucepan over the fire, and keep 
stirring it, sprinkling, from time to time, small quan- 
tities of the meal, till the composition boils, and has 
acquired the proper consistency. That may be 
known by its glutinous state as it drops from the 
spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then 
pour it, not into a deep dish, but into common dinner 
plates, and it will form a soft, thin, jellied cake; 
spoon out portions of this, and float it in new milk, 
adding moist sugar, to your taste.” For the benefit 
of others, I may add my testimony touching this 
recipe. I have strictly followed the instruction given, 
and I certainly never tasted anything to equal the 
dish. It was execrable! But it has the double 
recommendation of being easy to digest, and of keep- 
ing off the sensation of hunger for a very long time. 
Use alone is needed to make it a popular breakfast, 
and he is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But it is 
time to consider the various — 


BREAKFAST 35 
MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST 


AnD first of milk. If Britons really have, what 
they so much boast of, —a birthright, —the least 
disputable article of that class is their undoubted 
right to that lacteal treasure which their mother 
holds from Nature, on trust, for their use and advan- 
tage. 

It-1s)a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are 
those who are most ordinarily deprived of this first 
right of their citizenship, and are sent to slake their 
thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at ochlocratic 
breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, 
but he was triumphantly so when he denounced the 
young and healthy mother, let her rank be what it 
might, who made surrender of what should be one of 
the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung 
her child to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say 
what bad principles may not have been drawn in 
with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this vica- 
rious exercise of. the office of maternity is an abomi- 
nation; and the abomination of having one’s child 
suckled by a mercenary stranger can only be next in 
intensity to that of having him — but let us keep 
to “ Table Traits.” . 

Milk is too popularly known to need description ; 
but it is not all that is sold under that name that 
comes from the cow. The cow with one arm, that 
produces what fresh medical students call the agua 
pumpaginis, has very much to do with the dairies of 
London. Metropolitan milkmaids are not as unso- 
phisticated as the milkmaids of the olden time; if, 
indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even 


36 TABLE TRAITS 


then; for milk was a propitiatory offering to Mer- 
cury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mis- 
chief, why, Dan Mercury was the one. 

In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for 
baths as well as beverage. Five hundred asses 
supplied the bath and toilet-vases of the Empress 
Poppzea ; and some dozen or two were kept to main- 
tain the decaying strength of Francis I. Of course, 
asses’ milk became fashionable in Paris immediately, 
just as bolster cravats did with us, when the regent 
took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease 
in the neck. 

“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese’’ were classical 
names for butter,—a substance which was not 
known in either Greece or Rome until comparatively 
late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and 
Rome knew it not as an article of food until the 
legionaries saw the use to which it was applied by 
the German matrons. The Scythians, like the mod- 
ern Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their 
churners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded 
before they were chained to the sticks beside the tub, 
at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work. 

There have been seasons when, as now in Ab- 
yssinia, butter has been burned in the lamps in 
churchs, instead of oil. The “butter-tower”’ of the 
cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation 
to its having been built from the proceeds of a tax 
levied in return for permissions to eat butter at 
uncanonical times ; so that the tower is a monument 
of the violation of the ecclesiastical canons. But 
there is great license in these matters; and chapels 
in Ireland have been constructed with money raised 





BREAKFAST 37 


by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, 
at half a crown a ticket! 

Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all con- 
tributed their milk toward the making of cheese; and 
national prejudice has run so high on the question of 
superiority, that as many broken heads have been the 
result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at 
Dinant on the question of copper kettles. The 
Phrygian cheese is said to have owed its excellence 
to the fact that it was made of asses’ and mares’ milk 
mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong- 
smelling Phrygian cheese was equal to our Stilton, — 
which, by the way, is not made at Stilton, —and 
whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the 
addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at 
Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese, — principally 
goat cheese. It was administered, on the same prin- 
ciple that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. 
People in rude health flourished in spite of it, and 
therefore ailing people must, it was thought, be invig- 
orated because of it. However, our own system is 
less open to objection than that of the ancient 
faculty. 

I do not know whether mothers will consider it 
complimentary or not, but it is a fact, that the milk 
of asses more nearly resembles human milk than any 
other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccha- 
rine matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large 
proportion of curd by mere repose. 

Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and 
but slightly excites to vascular action. It is strin- 
gent, however, and has a tendency to create acidity ; 
but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both 


38 TABLE TRAITS 


these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and 
simmered with the milk, is of highly nourishing qual- 
ity; but it is sometimes more than weak stomachs 
can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as 
sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt 
to create in feeble stomachs. 

Eggs have been as violently eulogised as they have 
been condemned, and both in extremes. In some 
parts of Africa, where they are very scarce, and the 
priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to 
the people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical 
gentlemen to eat eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so 
speak, is quieted by the assurance, that, though the 
sacred hens produce only for the servants at the altar, 
the latter never address themselves to the food in 
question, without the whole body of the laity profit- 
ing thereby! I suppose that dissenters naturally 
abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so 
unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a 
duty which every man is disposed to perform for 
himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All 
the eggs in Africa, passing the cesophagus of a priest, 
could hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs 
were as gigantic as those which an old author says 
are presented by ladies in the moon to their pro- 
foundly delighted husbands, and from which spring 
young babies, six feet high, and men at all points. 

If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable 
in this respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were 
not less so in another: they had a singular method 
of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid 
them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rota- 
tory motion thereto, that they were heated and 


BREAKFAST 39 


cooked by the very friction of the air through which 
they passed ! 

Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia 
was told, just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch 
one in her bosom, and that the sex of the chick would 
foretell that of the expected little stranger. In Rome 
and Greece eggs were among the introductory por- 
tions of every banquet. But Rome knew only of 
twenty different manners of cooking them. What 
an advance in civilisation. has been made in Paris, 
which, according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six 
hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs! 

Eggs filled with salt used to be eaten by curious 
maidens, after a whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’s 
Eve: the profit of such a meal was, that she who 
partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of 
that very interesting personage, her future husband. 

There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that 
he could tell, by the look of the egg, whether the 
bird would be worth anything or not. He reminds 
me of an old monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, 
on a man passing him, could tell whether he were an 
honest man, or a knave, by the smell! But the 
Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He 
could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A 
badger once carried off his sitting-hen, and no plumed 
nurse was near to supply her place. The weaver 
thereupon took the eggs (there were six of them) to 
bed with him, and in about two days hatched them 
all. Of this brood he only reared a cock and a hen. 
The cock was a gallant bird, that used to win flitches 
of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen 
was as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. 


40 TABLE TRAITS 


The result was that they kept their stepmother, the 
weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a month; and 
the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown 
away as might, at first sight, appear. 

Let it be understood that eggs may lose their 
nourishment by cooking. The yolk, raw or very 
slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious. It is, more- 
over, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice. 
When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance 
of culinary heat, its nature is entirely changed. A 
slightly boiled egg, however, is more easy of digestion 
than a rawone. The best accompaniment for a hard 
ege is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; 
hard-boiled the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in 
some persons, which shows itself in the utter disgust 
which they experience, not only against the egg itself, 
but also against any preparation of which it forms an 
ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be 
liberally accompanied by bread; of which I will now 
say a few words, and first of — 


CORN 


Our first parents received the mission to cultivate 
the garden which was given them fora home. Their 
Hebrew descendants looked upon tillage of all de- 
scriptions with a reverence worthy of the authority 
which they professed to obey. The sons of the 
tribes stood proudly by the plough, the daughters 
of the patriarchs were gleaners, warriors lent their 
strength in the threshing barn, kings guided oxen, 
and prophets were summoned from the furrows to 
put on their mantles, and go forth and tell of things 


BREAKFAST 41 


that were to come. What Heaven had enjoined, the 
law enforced. The people were taught to love and 
hold by the land which was in their own possession. 
To alienate it was to commit a crime. And it is 
from this ancient rule, probably, that has descended 
to us the feeling which universally prevails, — that 
he alone is aristocratic, has the best of power, who is 
lord of the land upon which he has. built his earthly 
tabernacle. 

The fields of Palestine were fertile beyond what 
was known elsewhere; her cattle produced more 
abundantly, and the very appellations of many of 
her localities have reference to the beauty and the 
blessings showered down upon them by the Lord. 

Next to it, perhaps, in richness and productiveness, 
was Egypt, the home of fugitives from other homes 
where temporary famine reigned. Egypt was long 
the granary of the Roman Empire, and twenty mil- 
lion bushels of corn was the life-sustaining tribute 
which she annually poured into the storehouses of 
imperial Rome. That territory could hardly be more 
productive, of which an old Latin author speaks, and 
touching which he says, that a rod thrust into the 
soil at night would be found budding before morning. 
And this ancient story, I may notice, has been the 
venerable father of a large family of similar jokes 
among our transatlantic cousins. 

The Egyptians recognised Osiris as their instructor 
how to subdue and use the earth. The Greeks took 
the teaching from Ceres. Romulus, too, acknowl- 
edged the divine influence; and his first public act, 
as king, was to raise the twelve sons of his nurse into 
a priesthood, charged with watching over the fields, 


42 TABLE TRAITS 


and paying sacrifice and prayer to Jove for yearly 
increase of harvests. : 

It was a selfish wish; but not more so than that 
of the Italian peasants, who, when one who was a 
native of their district had been raised to the tiara, 
sent a delegation to request an especial favour at his 
hands. The new Pope looked on his old acquaint- 
ances benevolently, and bade them express their 
wish. “They wanted but a modest boon,” they 
replied; ‘‘nothing more than a declaration from the 
pontiff that their district should be henceforth dis- 
tinguished by its having two harvests every year!” 
And the obliging “successor of the fisherman” 
smiled, and not only granted their request, but prom- 
ised more than he was petitioned for. “To do 
honour to my old friends,” said he, “not alone shall 
they have two harvests every year, but henceforth 
the year in their district shall be twice as long as it 
is in any other!’”’ And therewith the simple people 
departed joyously. 

The older Romans honoured agriculture, as did 
the Jews. Their language bore reference to this, their 
coin was stamped with symbols in connection there- 
with, and their public treasury, “fascua,’ showed, 
by its name, that “pasturage” was wealth. So he 
who was rich in minted coin enjoyed the pecunza, or 
“money, for which “flocks” (pecus) were bought 
and sold. The owner of an “estate” (docus) was 
locuples, a term for a man well endowed with worldly 
goods; and he was in possession of a “salary,” who 
had his salartwm, his allowance of salt-money, or of 
salt, wherewith to savour the food by which he lived. 

The Greeks refreshed the mouths of their plough- 





BREAKFAST 43 


ing oxen with wine. The labour was considerable ; 
for, although the plough was light, it lacked the con- 
veniences of the more modern implement. Like the 
Anglo-Norman plough, it had no wheels: the wheeled 
plough is the work of the inventive Gauls. 

The French Republicans made a show of paying 
honour to agriculture by public demonstrations, the 
chief actors in which were the foremost men in the 
land of equality. They, absurdly enough, took their 
idea from the example presented them by a monarch, 
all of whom they pronounced execrable; and by one, 
too, who was the most despotic upon earth, — the 
Emperor of China. 

And, in the case of the emperor, there probably 
was more ostentation than any better motive for the 
act. Grimm, in his “Correspondence,” says, truly 
enough, that the ceremony is a fine one, which places 
the Emperor of China, every year, at the tail of the 
plough ; but, as he adds, it is possible that, like much 
of the etiquette of European courts, such a custom 
may have sunk into a mere observance, exercising no 
influence on the public mind. “I defy you,” he says, 
“to find a more impressive ceremony than that by 
which the Doge of Venice yearly declares himself the 
husband of the Adriatic Sea. How exalting! how 
stimulating! how proudly inspiring for the Venetians, 
when their nation was, in reality, sovereign of the 
seas! But now it is little more than a ridiculous 
sport, and without any other effect than that of 
attracting a multitude of people to the Fair of the 
Ascension.” 

Charles IX., infamous as he was in most respects, 
was honourable in one; namely, in exempting from 


44 TABLE TRAITS 


arrest for debt all persons engaged in the cultivation 
of land, “with intent to raise grain and fruit neces- 
sary for the sustenance of men and beasts.” All the 
property of such husbandmen was alike exempted 
from seizure; and it strikes us, that this was a much 
more reasonably founded exemption than that with 
which we endow vowé members of Parliament, who 
have no excuse for exceeding their income. They 
are free from arrest for six weeks from the proroga- 
tion of Parliament; and this is the cause of the farce 
which is so often played in the autumn and winter, 
when Parliament is “further prorogued.” The great 
council would be all the better for the absence of 
men who so far forget their duty as to cheat her 
Majesty’s lieges by exceeding their own income. The 
senate could better spare the spendthrifts, than the 
land could spare the presence of him whose mission 
it is to render it productive. 

Wheat is a native of Asia, — some say, of Siberia ; 
others, of Tartary; but it is a matter of doubt, 
whether it can now be found there growing in a wild 
state. The Romans created a corn-god, and then 
asked its protection. The powerful deity was called 
Robigus, and he was solemnly invoked, on every 25th 
of April, to keep mildew from the grain. The 
Romans had a reverence for corn, but barley was 
excepted from this homage; and to threaten to put 
an offending soldier on rations of barley, was to 
menace him with disgrace. The Italian antipathy 
still exists, if we may believe the Italian professor, 
who, being offered a basin of gruel (made from bar- 
ley), declared its proper appellation to be “acqua 
crudele.” We accounted of it, as Pliny did of rye, 





BREAKFAST 45 


that it was detestable, and could only be swallowed 
by an extremely hungry man. Oats were only 
esteemed a degree higher by Virgil. The poet 
speaks of them almost as disparagingly as Johnson 
did, when he described them as ‘food for horses in 
England, and for men in Scotland.” The grain, 
however, found a good advocate in him who asked, 
“Where did you ever see such horses and such 
men?” The meal is, nevertheless, of a heating qual- 
ity, and certain cutaneous diseases are traced to a too 
exclusive use of it. But oatmeal cakes are not bad 
eating, — where better is not to be procured, — 
though they are less attractive to the palate than 
those sweet buns made from sesame grain, and which 
the Romans not only swallowed with delight, but 
used the name proverbially. The lover who was 
treating his mistress to sugared phrases, was said to 
be regaling her with “sesame cakes.” This sort of 
provision was very largely dealt in by Latin lovers. 
It was to be had cheaply ; and nymphs consumed as 
fast as swains presented. 

If lovers gave the light bread of persuasion to win 
a maiden’s affection, the government distributed solid 
loaves, or corn to make them with, to the people, in 
order to gain the popular esteem, and suppress sedi- 
tion. In some cases, it was as a “poor’s rate” paid 
by the emperors, and costing them nothing. In too 
many cases, it was ill applied; and if Adrian daily 
fed all the children of the poor, other imperial rulers 
showered their tens of thousands of bushels daily on 
an idle populace and a half-dressed soldiery. It was 
easily procured. Sixty millions of bushels — twenty 
times that number of pounds’ weight — were supplied 


46 TABLE TRAITS 


by Africa; and those “sweet nurses of Rome,” the 
islands of the Mediterranean, also poured into the 
imperial granaries an abundant tribute of the golden 
seed. It is a fact, however, that neither Romans nor 
Gauls were, till a late period, acquainted with the 
method of making fermented bread. 

Ambrosia, nine times sweeter than honey, was the 
food of the gods; the first men existed on more 
bitter fare, — bread made from acorns. Ceres has 
the honour of having introduced a better fare. Men 
worshipped her accordingly ; and abandoning acorns, 
took also to eating the pig, now allowed to fatten on 
them at his leisure. Ceres and King Miletus dispute 
the renown of having invented grinding-stones. The 
hand-mill was one of the trophies which the Roman 
eagles bore back with them from Asia. Mola, the 
goddess charged therewith, looked to the well-being ~ 
of mills, millers, and bread. In Greece, Mercury had 
something to do with this. It was he, at least, who 
sent to the Athenian market-women, selling bread, 
their customers; and, as he was the God of Elo- 
quence, it is, doubtless, from this ancient source that 
all market-women are endowed with shrewdness and 
loquacity. 

The Athenian bread-sellers are said to have pos- 
sessed both. Our ladies of the Gate, in Billing’s 
Ward, are, probably, not behind them; and I am 
inclined to think that a true old-fashioned Bristol 
market-woman would surpass both. Let me cite an 
Instance. 

Some years ago, an old member of this ancient 
sisterhood was standing at her stall, in front of one of 
the Bristol banks. She had a £10 Bank-of-England 


BREAKFAST 47 


note in her hand; and as, in her younger days, she 
had been nurse-maid in the family of one of the 
partners, she thought she might venture to enter, and 
ask for gold for her note. She did so; but it was at 
a time when guineas were worth five and twenty shil- 
lings apiece, and gold was scarce, and —in short, 
she met with a refusal. The quick-witted market- 
woman, without exhibiting any disappointment, there- 
upon asked the cashier to let her have ten of the 
bank’s AI notes in exchange for her “ Bank-of-Eng- 
lander.” The cashier was delighted to accommodate 
her in this fashion. The exchange being completed, 
the old lady, taking up one of the provincial notes, 
read aloud the promise engraved upon it, to pay the 
bearer in cash. ‘ Very good!”’ said she, with a glee- 
some chuckle, “now gi’ me goold for your notes, or 
I'll run to the door, and call out, ‘ Bank’s broke!’ ” 
There was no resisting this, and the market-woman 
departed triumphantly with her gold. Light-heeled 
Mercury could not have helped her better than she 
helped herself, by means of her own sharp wit. 
Despite what Virgil says of oats, the Roman 
soldiery, for many years, had no better food than 
gruel made from oatmeal, and sharpened for the 
appetite by a little vinegar. The vinegar was an 
addition suggested by Numa, who also not only im- 
proved the very rude ideas which previously prevailed 
with regard to the making of bread, but turned baker 
himself, and sent his loaves to the ovens which he 
had erected, and to the bakers whom he had raised 
into a “guild,” placed under the protection of the 
goddess Fornax, —and a very indifferent, nay, dis- 
reputable, deity she was! The public ovens were to 


48 TABLE TRAITS 


the people of Rome what a barber’s shop is to a vil- 
lage in war-time, —the temple of gossip. It had 
been well had they never been anything worse! The 
vocation of baker was hereditary in a family; the son 
was compelled to follow his father’s calling. Occa- 
sionally, a member of the fraternity was offered a 
senatorship; but then he was required to make over 
his property, realised by baking, to his successors ; 
and consequently, the honour was as deeply declined 
as the London mayoralty would be by the governor 
of the Bank of England. 

If Fornax was the goddess to whose patronage the 
bakers were consigned by the state, she suffered by 
the religious liberty exercised by the bakers them- 
selves, who chose to pay adoration to Vesta. Vesta 
was the very antipodes in character and attributes to 
Fornax ; and the selection of the former would seem 
to show, that the generally reviled bakers could not 
only praise virtue, but practise it. 

Endless were the varieties of bread sold in the 
markets at Rome. There was Cappadocian bread for 
the wealthy; pugilistic loaves for the athletz ; bat- 
ter-bread for the strong, and Greek rolls for the 
weak, of stomach: and there were the prepared bread 
poultices, which people who, like Pompey’s young 
soldiers, were afraid of injuring their complexion, 
were wont to keep applied to their cheeks during the 
hours of sleep. Anadyomene so slumbering, with 
Adonis at her side similarly poulticed, can hardly be 
said to be a subject for a painter; and yet many a 
blooming Caia slept on the bosom of her Caius, and 
more pants madidus than blushes on the cheeks of 
either. 





BREAKFAST 49 


Pliny ventures on a strange statement with regard 
to oats. He says that oats and barley are so nearly 
allied, that when a man sows the one, he is not sure 
that he may not reap the other! He also illustrates 
the prolificness of millet, by asserting that a single 
grain produced “innumerable ears of corn; and that a 
bushel (twenty pounds’ weight) of millet would make 
‘more than sixty pounds of wholesome bread!” The 
Romans and the Greeks also appear to have been 
acquainted with Indian corn. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, much as he affected to 
love nature, —and he was himself one of the most 
artificial of characters, — knew very little about her, 
or her productions. Some of our great men are 
described as being in much the same condition of 
ignorance. ‘Three poets of the last century were one 
day walking through a field, promising a glorious 
harvest of grain. One of them extolled the beauty 
of the wheat. “Nay,” said the second, “it is rye.” 
‘‘Not so,” remarked the third, ‘it is a field of bar- 
ley.” A clown, standing by, heard and marvelled at 
the triple ignorance. “You are all wrong, gentle- 
Men, said he; “those be oats.’ The poets were 
town-bred ; or were of that class of people who go 
through a country with their eyes open, and are 
unable to distinguish between its productions. I have 
seen Londoners contemplating, with a very puzzled 
look, the “canary” crops growing in the vicinity of 
Herne Bay; and I was once gravely asked if it was 
teazigt*' 

These crops are, as I was told by a grower, “ capri- 
cious.’ They will grow abundantly upon certain 
land having certain aspects; but where the aspect is 


50 TABLE TRAITS 


changed, although the land be chemically the same, 
the canary will scarcely grow at all. It is shipped in 
large quantities from Herne Bay for London, where 
it is used for many purposes. None of its uses are 
so singular as one to which corn was applied, some 
thirty years ago, in the western settlements of 
America; namely, for stretching boots and shoes. 
The boot or shoe was well filled with corn, and made | 
secure by such tight tying that none could escape. 
It was then immersed for several hours in water; 
during which the leather was distended by the 
gradual swelling of the grain. After being taken 
from the water, a coating of neat’s-foot oil, laid 
on and left to dry, rendered the boot or shoe fit 
for wear. 

A more interesting anecdote in connection with 
corn, and illustrative of character, is afforded us by 
Doctor Chalmers in his diary. The doctor, as is well 
known,—and he was ever ready to confess his 
weakness, — occasionally let his warm temper get 
the better of his excellent judgment. Here is an 
instance, which shows, moreover, how Christian judg- 
ment recovered itself from the influence of human 
nature: “November 20, 1812. — Was provoked with 
Thomas taking it upon him to ask more corn for my 
horse. It has got feeble under his administration of 
corn, and I am not without suspicion that he appro- 
priates it; and his eagerness to have it strengthens 
the suspicion. Erred in betraying anger to my ser- 
vant and wife; and, though I afterward got my feel- 
ings into a state of placidity and forbearance, upon 
Christian principles, was moved and agitated when I 
came to talk of it to himself. Let me take the corn 





BREAKFAST SI 


into my own hand, but carry it to him with entire 
charity. Oh, my God, support me!” Was it not to 
Socrates that some one said: “To judge from your 
looks, you are the best-tempered man in the world.” 
«Then my looks belie me,” replied the philosopher ; 
“‘T have the worst possible temper, by nature; with 
the strongest possible control over it, by philosophy.” 
Chalmers was, in one sense, like Socrates; but the 
control over his stubborn infirmity had something 
better “than your philosophy ” for its support. 

Reverting to the feeding of horses, I may notice, 
that, according to the Earl of Northumberland’s 
“Household Book,” the corn was not thrown loose 
into the manger, but made into loaves. It has been 
conjectured, that the English poor formerly ate the 
same bread. There can be no question about it; and 
even at the present time it is no uncommon sight, in 
some towns of the Continent, to see a driver feeding 
his horse from a loaf, and occasionally taking a slice 
therefrom for himself. 

There is no greater consumer of corn in England 
than the pigeon. Vancouver, in laudable zeal for the 
hungry poor, calls pigeons ‘voracious and insatiate 
vermin.” He calculates the pigeons of England and 
Wales at nearly a million and a quarter; “ consum- 
ing 159,500,000 pints of corn annually, to the value 
of 41,476,562 tos.” It is impossible for calcula- 
tion to be made closer. Darwin says of pigeons, 
that they have an organ in the stomach for secreting 
milk. And it is not alone in the way of devouring 
corn that they are destructive. In the “ Philosophi- 
cal Transactions,” it is mentioned that pigeons for 
many ages built under the roof of the great church 


52 TABLE TRAITS 


of Pisa. Their dung spontaneously took fire, at last, 
and the church was consumed. 

I have said that the Roman soldiers marched to 
victory under the influence of no more exciting stim- 
ulant than gruel and vinegar. A little oatmeal has 
often sustained the strength of our own legions in 
the hour of struggle. The Germans, brave as they 
are, sometimes require a more substantial support. 
Thus, after a defeat endured by the Great Frederick, 
hundreds of respectable burgesses of the province of 
Mark set out as volunteers for the royal army, — the 
Hellengers in white, the Sauerlanders in blue jackets, 
— each man with a stout staff in his hand, and a rye 
loaf and a ham on his back. “Fritz” glared with 
astonishment when they presented themselves at his 
headquarters. “Where do you fellows come from ?” 
said he. “From Mark, to help our king.” “Who 
doesn’t want you,” interrupted Fritz. “So much the 
better; we are here of our own accord.” ‘ Where 
are your officers?”’ ‘We have none.” “And how 
many of you deserted by the way?” ‘ Deserted!” 
cried the Markers, indignantly: “if any of us had 
been capable of that, we should not be what we are, 
— volunteers.” “True!” said the king, “and I can~ 
depend upon you. You shall have fire enough soon 
to toast your bread and cook your hams by.” 

When Henri IV. was besieging Paris, held by the 
Leaguers, the want most severely felt by the fam- 
ished inhabitants was that of bread. The Guise 
party, who held the city, — and the most active agent 
of that party was the Duchess of Montpensier, the 
sister of Duke Henri of Guise, — endeavoured to 
keep life in the people by means that nature revolts 





BREAKFAST ie 


at. When every other sort of food had disappeared, 
the government within the walls distributed very di- 
minutive rolls made of a paste, the chief ingredient in 
which was human bones ground to powder. The 
people devoured them under the name of ‘ Madame 
de Montpensier’s cakes ;’’ no wonder that they soon 
after exultingly welcomed the entry of a king, who 
declared that his first desire was to secure to every 
man in France his “foule au pot!’ But enough of 
bread. Let us examine briefly the subject of — 


. 


BUTTER 


THE illustrious Ude, or some one constituting him 
the authority for the nonce, has sneered at the Eng- 
lish as being a nation having twenty religions, and 
only one sauce, — melted butter. A French com- 
mentator has added, that we have nothing polished 
about us but our steel, and that our only ripe fruit is 
baked apples. Guy Pantin traces the alleged dislike 
of the French of his day for the English, to the cir- 
cumstance that the latter poured melted butter over 
their roast veal. The French execration is amusingly 
said to have been further directed against us, on 
account of the declared barbarism of eating oyster- 
sauce with rump-steak, and “ poultice,” as they cruelly 
characterise ‘‘bread sauce,” with pheasant. But, to 
return to butter: the spilling of it has more than 
once been elucidative of character. When, in the 
days of the old régime, an English servant acciden- 
tally let a drop or two of melted butter fall upon the 
silken suit of a French fetzt maitre, the latter indig- 
nantly declared that ‘blood and butter were an Eng- 


54 TABLE TRAITS 


lishman’s food.’”’ The conclusion was illogical, but 
the arguer was excited. Lord John Townshend man- 
ifested better temper and wit, when a similar acci- 
dent befell him, as he was dining at a friend’s table, 
where the coachman was the only servant in waiting. 
“ John,’ said my lord, “you should never grease 
anything but your coach-wheels.”’ 

It was an old popular error that a pound of butter 
might consist of any number of ounces. It is an 
equally popular error, that a breakfast cannot be, 
unless bread and butter be of it. Marcus Antoninus 
breakfasted on dry biscuits; and many a person of 
less rank, and higher worth, is equally incapable of 
digesting anything stronger. Solid breakfasts are 
only fit for those who have much solid exercise to 
take after it; otherwise heartburn may be looked 
for. Avoid new bread and spongy rolls; look on 
muffins and crumpets as inventions of men of worse 
than sanguinary principles, and hot buttered toast as 
of equally wicked origin. Dry toast is the safest 
morning food, perhaps, for persons of indifferent 
powers of digestion; or they may substitute for it 
the imperial fashion set by Marcus Antoninus. Of 
liquids I may next speak; and in this our ancient 
friend, tea, takes the precedence. 


TEA 


THE origin of tea is very satisfactorily accounted 
for by the Indian mythologists. Darma, a Hindoo 
prince, went on a pilgrimage to China, vowing he 
would never take rest by the way; but he once fell 
asleep, and he was so angry with himself, on awaking, 


BREAKFAST 55 


that he cut off his eyelids, and flung them on the 
ground, They sprang up in the form of tea shrubs; 
and he who drinks of the infusion thereof, imbibes 
the juice of the eyelids of Darma. Tea, however, is 
said to have. been first used in China as a corrective 
for bad water; and that not at a remote date. 

In the seventeenth century, half the physicians of 
Holland published treatises in favour of tea. It was 
hailed as a panacea, and the most moderate eulogisers 
affirmed that two hundred cups a day might be 
drunk without injury to the stomach of the drinker. 
In the ninth century tea was taken in China simply 
as a medicine; and it then had the repute of being a 
_ panacea. The early Dutch physicians who so ear- 
nestly recommended its use as a common beverage, 
met with strenuous opposition. France, Germany, and 
Scotland, in the persons of Patin, Hahnemann, and 
Duncan, decried tea as an impertinent novelty, 
“and the vendors of it as immoral and mercenary. 
Nor was Holland itself unanimous in panegyrising 
the refreshing herb. Some, indeed, eulogised the 
infusion as the fountain of health, if not of youth; 
but others again, and those of the Dutch faculty, 
indignantly derided it as filthy ‘“hay-water.” Ole- 
arius, the German, on the other hand, recognised its 
dietetic virtues as early as 1133; while a Russian 
ambassador, at about the same period, refused a 
pound or two of it offered him by the Mogul as a 
present to the Tsar, on the ground that the gift was 
neither useful nor agreeable. 

The Dutch appear to have been the first who dis- 
covered the value of the shrub, in a double sense. 
They not only procured it for the sake of its virtues, 


56 TABLE TRAITS 


but contrived to do so by a very profitable species of 
barter. They exchanged with the Chinese a pound of 
sago for three or four pounds of tea; and it is very 
possible that each party, preferring its own acquisi- 
tion, looked on the opposite party as duped. 

Tea is supposed to have been first imported into 
England, from Holland, in 1666, by Lords Arundel 
and Ossory. We cannot be surprised that it was 
slow in acquiring the popular favour, if its original 
cost was, as it is said to have been, 60s. per pound. 
But great uncertainty rests as well upon the period 
of introduction, as upon the original importers, and 
the value of the merchandise. One fact connected 
with it is well ascertained; namely, that, European 
companies had long traded with China before they 
discovered the value and uses of tea. 

It is said to have been in favour at the court of 
Charles II., owing to the example of Catherine, his 
queen, who had been used to drink it in Portugal.’ 
Medical men thought, at that time, that health could 
not be more effectually promoted than by increasing 
the fluidity of the blood; and that the infusion of 
Indian tea was the best. means of attaining that ob- 
ject. In 1678, Bontekoe, a Dutch physician, pub- 
lished a celebrated treatise in favour of tea, and to 
his authority its general use in so many parts of 
Europe is to be attributed. 

The first tea-dealer was also a tobacconist, and sold 
the two weeds of novelty together, or separately. 
His name was Garway (‘“Garraway’s”), and his 
locale, Exchange Alley. It was looked upon chiefly 
as a medicinal herb; and Garway, in the seventeenth 
century, not only “made up prescriptions,” in which 


BREAKFAST 57 


tea was the sole ingredient, but parcels for presents, 
and cups of the infusion for those who resorted to 
his house to drink it over his counter. Its price then 
varied from IIs. to 50s. per pound. The taking tea 
with a visitor was soon a domestic circumstance 3 and, 
toward the end of the century, Lord Clarendon and 
Pere Couplet supped together, and had a cup of tea 
after supper, an occurrence which is journalised by 
his lordship without any remark to lead us to suppose, 
that it was an extraordinary event. 

Doctor Lettsom has written-largely, and plagiarised 
unreservedly on the subject of tea; adding, as Mr. 
Disraeli remarks, his own dry medical reflections to 
the sparkling facts of others; but he was the first, 
perhaps, who established the unwholesomeness of 
green tea. He “distilled some green tea, injected 
three drachms of the very odorous and _ pellucid 
water which he obtained, into the cavity of the ab- 
domen and cellular membrane of a frog, by which he 
paralysed the animal. He applied it to the cavity of 
the abdomen and ischiatic nerves of another, and the 
frog died; and this he thought proved green tea to be 
unwholesome’”’ —to the frogs, and so applied, as it 
undoubtedly was. Such experiments, however, are 
unsatisfactory. Mux vomica, for instance, deadly 
poison to man, may be taken, almost with impunity, 
by many animals. 

The first brewers of tea were often sorely per- 
plexed with the preparation of the new mystery. 
«Mrs. Hutchinson’s great-grandmother was one of a 
party who sat down to the first pound of tea that 
ever came into Penrith. It was sent as a present, 

and without directions how to use it. They boiled 


58 TABLE TRAITS 


the whole at once in a bottle, and sat down to eat the 
leaves with butter and salt, and they wondered how 
any person could like such a diet.” | 

Steele, in “The Funeral;” laughs’ at tiemegae 
which cheer, but not inebriate.” ‘Don’t you see,” 
says he, “how they swallow gallons of the juice of 
tea, while their own dock-leaves are trodden under 
foot ?” 

.« What Bishop Berkeley did with “tar water,” 
when he made his essay thereupon a ground for a 
dissertation on the Trinity, Joseph Williams — “the 
Christian merchant”’ of the early and middle part of 
last century, whose biography is well known to serious 
readers — did, when he wrote to his friend Green 
upon the necessity of “setting the Lord always be- 
fore us.” When treating of this subject, the pious 
layman adverts to a present of that new thing called 
‘tea,’ which Green had sent him, and which had 
lost’ some of its flavour in the transit. There is 
something ‘amusing in the half sensual, half spiritual 
way in which’ worthy. Joseph Williams mixes his 
jeremiad upon tea with one upon human morals. 
«The tea,” he says, “came safe to hand, but it hath 
lost the elegant flavour it had when we drank of it at 
Sherborne, owing, I suppose, to its conveyance in 
paper, which, being very porous, easily admits effluvia 
from other goods packed up with it, and emits effluvia 
from the tea. Such are the moral tendencies of evil 
communications among men, which nothing will pre- 
vent (like canisters for tea), but taking to us the 
whole armour of God. Had the tea been packed up 
with cloves, mace, and cinnamon, it would have been 
tinctured with these sweet spices; so ‘he that walks 


BREAKFAST 59 


with wise men shall be wise.’ He that converses 
with heaven-born souls, whose conversation is in 
heaven, whose treasure and whose hearts are there, 
will catch some sparks from their holy fire; but ‘evil 
communications corrupt good manners.’ I have put 
the tea into a canister, and am told it will recover its 
original flavour, as the pious soul which hath received 
some ill impressions from vicious or vain conversation 
will, by retiring from the world, by communing with 
his own heart, by heavenly meditation, and fervent 
prayer, recover his spiritual ardour.’’ The simile, 
however, limps a little; for if every man canistered 
himself, and a good example, from the world, the 
wide-spreading aroma of that example would never 
seductively insinuate itself into the souls of men. It 
is by contact we brighten, and sometimes suffer. 
We must not canister our virtue as Mr. Williams did 
his tea: the latter was for selfish enjoyment. A 
guinea may be kept for ever unstained by the com- 
merce of the world, in the very centre of the chest of | 
avarice ;.but what good does it do there? Let it cir- 
culate merrily through the hundred hands of the giant 
Industry, and there will be more profit than evil 
effected by the process. But good Joseph Williams 
would not have agreed with us, and he would take 
his saintly similes from traits of the table. “Oh 
that I may walk humbly,” he says, ‘and look on 
myself, when fullest of divine communications, but as 
a drinking-glass without a foot, and which, conse- 
quently, cannot stand of itself, nor retain what may 
be put into it.” A very tipsy-like simile. 

I may be permitted to add that, after all, religion 
happily proved stronger than tea, but not without 


60 TABLE TRAITS 


still stronger opposition ; and we are told by the dis- 
gusted Connozsseur, that “persons of fashion cannot 
but lament that the Sunday evening tea-drinkings in 
Ranelagh were laid aside, from a superstitious regard 
to religion.” A remark which shows how very poor 
a connoisseur this writer was in matters of propriety. 
Not, indeed, that diet and divinity could not be 
seated at the same table. On Easter day, for 
instance, the first dish that used to be placed before 
the jubilant guests was a red-herring on horseback, 
set in a corn salad. Some 150 years ago, too, there 
was a semi-religious, semi-roistering club held at the 
‘Northern Ale-house in St. Paul’s Alley,” every 
member of which was of the name of Adam. It was 
formed in honour and remembrance of the first man. 
The honour was more than Adam deserved; for the 
first created man not only betrayed his trust, but he 
shabbily sought to lay the responsibility upon the 
first woman. And as for “remembrance,” he has 
managed to survive even the memory of the club 
founded by his namesakes, and long since defunct. 
The members were hard drinkers, but not of saffron 
posset, which Arabella, in «The Committee,” recom- 
mends as “a very good drink against the heaviness 
of the spirits.” The Adamites mostly died, as the 
legend says Adam himself did, of hereditary gout, — 
an assertion which would seem to indicate that the 
author of it was of Hibernian origin ! | 

There are various passages of our poets which tend 
to show that “tea’’ and “coffee” became, very early, 
fixed social observances. Pope, writing, in 1715, of 
a lady who left town after the coronation of George 
I., says that she went to the country — 


BREAKFAST 61 


“To part her time ’twixt reading and Bohea, 
To muse, and spill her solitary tea; 
Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon, 
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.” 


At the same period, the more fortunate belles who 
remained in town made of tea a means for other ends 
than shortening time. Doctor Young, in his “ Sat- 
ires,” says of Memmia, that — 


‘“ Her two red lips affected zephyrs blow, 
To cool the Bohea and inflame the beau; 
While one white finger and a thumb conspire 
To lift the cup and make the world admire.” 


-Doctor Parr’s delicate compliment is well known ; 
but I may be pardoned, perhaps, for introducing it 
here. He was not very partial to the 7hea Sznensts, 
though lauded so warmly by a French writer, as 
“nostris gratissima Musis ;’’ but once being invited 
to take tea by a lady, he, with a mixture of wit and 
gallantry, exclaimed, “ WVec teacum possum vivere, nec 
sine te!” The Christchurch men at Oxford were 
remarkable, at an early period, for their love of tea; 
and, in reference to it, they were pleasantly recom- 
mended to adopt as their motto: “ Ze ventente die, 
te decedente notamus.’ In 1718, Pope draws an 
illustration from tea, when writing to Mr. Digby: 
“My Lady Scudamore,” he remarks, jocosely, “from 
having rusticated in your company too long, really 
behaves herself scandalously among us. She pre- 
tends to open her eyes for the sake of seeing the 
sun, and to sleep because it is night; drinks tea at 
nine in the morning, and is thought to have said her 
prayers before; talks, without any manner of shame, 


62 TABLE TRAITS 


of good books, and has not seen Cibber’s play of 
‘The Nonjuror.’”” This is a pleasant picture of the 
“good woman” of the last century. She drank tea 
at nine in the morning, not sleeping on till noon, to 
be aroused at last, like Belinda, by — 


«¢ Shock, who thought she slept too long, 
Leap’d up and waked his mistress with his tongue.” 


Tea is little nutritious ; it is often injurious from 
being drunk at too high a temperature, when the 
same quantity of the fluid at a lower temperature 
would be beneficial. It is astringent and narcotic; 
but its effects are various on various individuals, and 
the cup which refreshes and invigorates one, de- 
presses or unnaturally excites and damages the diges- 
tive powers of others. Green tea can in no case be 
useful, except medicinally, in cases where there has 
been excessive fatigue of the mind or body ; and even 
then the dose should be small. Tea, as a promoter 
of digestion, or, rather, as a comforter of the stomach 
when the digestive process has been completed, 
should not be taken earlier than from three to four 
hours after the principal meal. Taken too early, it 
disturbs digestion by arresting chymification, and by 
causing distension. The astringency of tea is dimin- 
ished by adding milk, and its true taste more than 
its virtue is spoiled by the addition of sugar. 

These remarks are applicable to tea in its pure 
state, and not to the adulterated messes which come 
from China, or are made up in England. If sloe 
leaves here are made to pass for Souchong, so also 
is many an unbroken chest of “tea” landed, which is 


BREAKFAST 63 


largely composed of leaves that are not the least akin 
to the genuine shrub. Black teas are converted into 
green, some say by means of a poisonous dye, others 
by roasting on copper; but I do not think this proc- 
ess is extensively adopted. At one time the chests 
were rendered heavy by an adulterated mixture of 
a considerable quantity of tea, and a not inconsider- 
able quantity of earthy detritus, strongly impregnated 
with iron. But our searchers soon put a stop to 
this knavery. They just dipped a powerful magnet 
into the chest, stirred it about, and, when drawn out, 
the iron particles, if any, were sure to be found ad- 
hering to the irresistible “detective.” I have heard 
that Lady Morgan’s tea-parties, in Dublin, were 
remarkable for the excellent qualities both of the 
beverage and the company; and also for her lady- 
ship’s stereotyped joke, of “ Sugar yourselves, gentle- 
men, and I[’ll milk you all.” 

Tea-parties, I may observe in conclusion, are not 
confined in China to festive occasions. Tea is sol- 
emnly drunk on serious celebrations, with squibs to 
follow. Thus, for instance, at the funeral of a Bud- 
dhist priest, there is thought taken for the living as 
well as for the dead, for the appetites of mortals as 
well as for the gratification of the gods. The latter 
are presented with various sorts of food, save animal. 
It is placed on the altar, and it is eaten at night by 
the deities, of course. While the ceremonies, prelim- 
inary to the interment are proceeding, a servant 
enters the temple, and hands tea round to the rever- 
end gentlemen who are officiating! The interment 
usually takes place in the morning, and it is numer- 
ously attended; but if, as the long procession is 


64 TABLE TRAITS 


advancing, the hour of breakfast should happen to 
arrive, the corpse is suddenly dropped in the highway, 
the entire assembly rush to their respective homes, 
and not till they have consumed their tea and toast, 
or whatever materials go to the constituting of a 
Chinese dé&euner, do they return to carry the corse 
to its final resting-place, and fire no end of squibs 
over it, in testimony of their affliction. Which done, 
more refreshment follows; and perhaps some of the 
mourners retire to Chinese taverns, where inviting 
placards promise them “A cup of tea and a bird’s 
nest for 4d. !” 
COREE 


THE English and French dispute the honour of 
being the first introducers of coffee into Western 
Europe. The Dutch assert that they assisted in this 
introduction ; and, although coffee was not drunk at 
Rome until long after it had been known to, and 
tasted by, Italian travellers at Constantinople, the 
Church looked with pleasure on a_ beverage, one 
effect of which was to keep both priests and people 
awake. 

An Arab author df the fifteenth century — Sher- 
baddin — asserts, that the first man who drank coffee 
was a certain Muphti of Aden, who lived in the ninth 
century of the Hegira, about a.p. 1500. The popu- 
lar tradition is, that the superior of a Dervish com- 
munity, observing the effects of coffee-berries when 
eaten by some goats, rendering them much more 
lively and skittish than before, prescribed it for the 
brotherhood, in order to cure them of drowsiness and 
indolence, 


BREAKFAST 6s 


It was originally known by the name of cahuz or 
kauht,—an orthography which comes near to that 
of the ingenious town-councillor of Leeds, who, writ- 
ing out a bill of fare for a public breakfast, contrived 
to spell “coffee” without employing a single letter 
that occurs in that word, —to wit, kawphy ! 

Sandys, a traveller of the seventeenth century, 
gives it no very attractive character. Good for 
digestion and mirth, he allows it to be; but he says 
that in taste as in colour it is nearly as black as 
soot. 

The coffee-houses of England take precedence of 
those of France, though the latter have more endur- 
ingly flourished. In 1652, a Greek, in the service of 
an English Turkey merchant, opened a house in 
London. “I have discovered his hand-bill,” says 
Mr. Disraeli, “in which he sets forth the virtue of 
the coffee drink, first publiquely made and sold in 
England, by Pasqua Rosee, of St. Michael’s Alley, 
Cornhill, at the sign of his own head.” Mr. Peter 
Cunningham cites a MS. of Oldys in his possession, 
in which some fuller details of much interest are 
given. Oldys says: “The first use of coffee in Eng- 
land was known in 1657, when Mr. Daniel Edwards, 
a Turkey merchant, brought from Smyrna to Lon- 
don one Pasqua Rosee, a Ragusan youth, who pre- 
pared this drink for him every morning. But the 
novelty thereof drawing too much company to him, 
he allowed his said servant, with another of his son- 
in-law’s, to sell it publicly ; and they set up the first 
coffee-house in London, in St. Michael’s Alley, Corn- 
hill, But they separating, Pasqua kept in the house ; 
and he who had been his partner obtained leave to 


66 TABLE TRAITS 


pitch a tent, and sell the liquor in St. Michael’s 
churchyard.” Aubrey, in his “ Anecdotes,” states 
that the first vendor of coffee in London was one 
Bowman, coachman to a Turkey merchant, named 
Hodges, who was the father-in-law of Edwards, and 
the partner of Pasqua, who got into difficulties, partly 
by his not being a freeman, and who left the country. 
Bowman was not only patronised, but a magnificent 
contribution of one thousand sixpences was presented 
to him, wherewith he made great improvements in 
his coffee-house. Bowman took an apprentice (Payn- 
ter), who soon learnt the mystery, and in four years 
set up for himself. The coffee-houses soon became 
numerous: the principal were Farres’s, the Rainbow 
at the Inner-Temple Gate, and John’s, in Fuller’s 
Rents. “Sir Henry Blount,” says Aubrey, “was 
a great upholder of coffee, and a constant frequenter 
of coffee-houses.”’ 

The frequenters of these places, however, were 
considered as belomging to the idle and dissipated 
classes; and the reputation was not altogether un- 
deserved. Respectable people denounced the coffee- 
drinking evils, illustriously obscure and loyal people 
dreaded the politics that were discussed at the drink- 
ing, and tipsy satirists hurled strong contempt and 
weak verse at the new-fangled fashion of abandoning 
Canary wine for the Arabian infusion. The fashion, 
however, extended rapidly; the more so, that cups 
were soon to be had at so low a price, that the shops 
where they were sold went by the name of “ Penny 
Universities.” The ladies, who were excluded from 
public participation in the bitter enjoyment, made 
some characteristic complaints against the male drink- 


BREAKFAST : 67 


ers, and intimated that the indulgence of coffee-drink- 
ing would in time deteriorate, if not destroy, the 
human race; but the imbibers heeded not the com- 
plaint, their answer to which was that of Béranger’s 
gay marital philosopher : 


« Nous laisserions finir le monde, 
Si nos femmes le voulaient bien.” 


While the ladies, through their poetical represent- 
atives, were complaining, male philanthropists quickly 
discerned the social uses of the cup; and Sir Henry 
Blount acknowledges with grateful pleasure, that the 
custom, on the part of labouring men and appren- 
tices, of drinking a cup of coffee in the morning, 
instead of their ordinary matinal draught of beer or 
wine, was chiefly owing to Sir James Muddiford, 
‘‘ who introduced the practice hereof first in London.” 

The government of the Stuarts, hating free dis- 
cussion and not particularly caring for wit, watched 
the coffee-houses with much jealousy, and placed as 
much restriction upon them as they possibly could 
strain the law to. The vexatious proceeding did not 
secure the desired result ; and the coffee-house wits 
laughed at the government. The wits, however, 
were not always successful either in their praise of, 
or satire against, coffee. Pepys, on the 15th of 
October, 1667, went to the Duke’s House, to see the 
comedy of “Taruga’s Wiles; or, the Coffee-house,’ 
of which he says, “The most ridiculous, insipid play 
that ever I saw in my life; and glad we were that 
Betterton had no part in it.”” But Pepys was prob- 
ably not in the true vein to decide critically that 


68 TABLE TRAITS 


night; for his pretty maid Willett was sitting at his 
side; and his wife, who was on the other, spoiled the 
effect of the play by her remarks on the girl’s “ con- 
fidence.” Perhaps one of the most curious apologies 
for coffee-houses was that of Aubrey, who declared 
that he should never have acquired so extensive an 
acquaintance but for “the modern advantages of 
coffee-houses in this great city, before which men 
knew not how to be acquainted but with their own 
relations and societies.” And Aubrey, who has been 
called the small Boswell of his day, “ was a man who 
had more acquaintances than friends.” 

Yemen is the accepted birthplace, if we may so 
speak, of the coffee-tree. Pietro de la Vallé intro- 
duced it into Italy, La Royne into Marseilles, and 
Thevenot brought it with him to Paris. In 1643, a 
Levantine opened a coffee-house in Paris, in the 
Place du Petit Chatelet ; but it was Soleiman Aga, 
Turkish ambassador in Paris, in 1689, who was the 
medium through which coffee found its way into the 
realm of fashion. Had it been really what some 
have supposed it to have been, —the black broth of 
the Lacedazmonians, — he could have made it modish 
by his method of service. This was marked by all 
the minute details of Oriental fashion, — small cups 
and footboys, gold-fringed napkins and pages, coffee 
wreathing with smoke, and Ganymedes wreathed with 
garlands, the first all aroma, and the hand-bearers all 
otto of roses: the whole thing was too dazzling and 
dramatic to escape adoption. But the intolerable 
vulgar would imitate their betters, and coffee became 
as common at taverns as wine, beer, and smoking. 
It would have inevitably been abandoned to coarse 


BREAKFAST 69 


appetites only, but for Francois Procope, a Sicilian, 
who, in the Rue de |’Ancienne Comédie, exactly 
opposite to the old playhouse in the Faubourg St. 
Germain, opened an establishment expressly for the 
sale of coffee, but with such innocent additional arti- 
cles as ices, lemonade, and the like harmless appli- 
ances, to make pleasant the seasons in their change. 
The Café Procope became the immediate resort of all 
the wits, philosophers, and refined voués of Paris. 
There Rousseau wrote or repeated the lines which 
brought him into such frequent trouble. There 
Piron muttered the verses with which the incitement 
of devils inspired him. There Voltaire tried to rule 
supreme, but found himself in frequent bitter con- 
test with Palissot and Freron. The Café Procope 
was the morning journal, the foreign news-mart, the 
exchange, — literary, witty, and emphatically charm- 
ing. There Lamothe renewed the contest between 
the ancient and modern, the classical and the romantic, 
drama. There the brilliant Chevalier de St. Georges 
gave lessons in fencing to the men of letters; and 
thence Dorat addressed his amorous missives to 
Mlle. Saunier. There Marmontel praised Clairon, 
and the Marquis de Biévre tried his calembourgs ; 
and there Duclos and Mercier made their sketches of 
society, at once serious and sarcastic. The universal 
favour in which coffee is still held in Paris, and the 
crowds which still wait on “ Andromaque,” sufficiently 
belie the famous prophecy of Madame de Sévigné, 
that “coffee and Racine would have their day.” The 
dark infusion reigns without a rival, the demz-tasse 
follows dinner oftener than “grace,” Rachel helps 
to keep Racine alive, and caf¢, in its turn, has the 


70 TABLE TRAITS 


reputation of being one of the favourite stimulants of 
the great ¢tragédienne. | 

With regard to the making of coffee, there is no 
doubt that the Turkish method of pounding the 
coffee in a mortar is infinitely superior to grinding 
it in a mill, as with us. But after either method the 
process recommended by M. Soyer may be advan- 
tageously adopted; namely: “Put two ounces of 
ground coffee into a stewpan, which set upon the 
fire, stirring the coffee round with a spoon until 
quite hot, then pour over a pint of boiling water; 
cover over closely for five Sy pass it peniepast” a 
cloth, warm again, and serve.’ 

The chemist Laplace explained to Napoleon the 
results of various methods of manipulation. “How 
is it, sir,” said the emperor, “that a glass of water in 
which I melt a lump of sugar, always appears to me 
to be superior in taste to one in which I put the 
same quantity of powdered sugar?” “Sire,” said 
the sage, “there exist three substances, whose ele- 
ments are precisely the same; namely, sugar, gum, 
and starch. They only differ under certain condi- 
tions, the secret of which nature has reserved to 
herself; and I believe that it is possible, that, by the 
collision caused by the pestle, some of the portions’of 
the sugar pass into the condition of gum or starch, 
and thence arises the result which has been ob- 
served.” 

Medical men are widely at issue as to the merits 
of coffee. All, however, are agreed that it stimulates 
the brain, and banishes somnolency. Voltaire and 
Buffon were great coffee-drinkers; but I do not 
know that we are authorised to attribute the lucidity 


BREAKFAST a1 


of the one or the harmony of the other to the habit 
in question. Ability would be cheaply purchased if 
that were the case; and the “royal road” would 
have been discovered where it had never been looked 
for. 

The sleeplessness produced by coffee is not one of 
an unpleasant character. It is simply a painless 
vigilance; but, if often repeated, it may be exceed- 
ingly prejudicial. Brillat de Savarin illustrates the 
power of coffee by remarking, that a man may live 
many years who takes two bottles of wine daily ; but 
the same quantity of strong coffee would soon make 
him imbecile, or drive him into a consumption. 

Taken immediately after dinner, coffee aids the 
dyspeptic, especially to digest fat and oily aliment, 
which, without such stimulant, would undoubtedly 
create much disturbance. The Turks drink it to 
modify the effects of opium. Café au Jatt, that is, 
three parts milk to one of coffee, is the proper thing 
for breakfast ;. but the addition of milk to that taken 
after dinner is a cruelty to the stomach. A Dutch- 
man, named Nieudorff, is said to have been the first 
who ventured on the experiment of mixing milk with 
coffee. When he had the courage to do this, the 
two liquids together were considered something of 
such an abomination as we should now consider 
brown sugar with oysters. 

I must not omit to mention, that the favourite 
beverage of Voltaire, at the Café Procope, was 
“ choca,’ —a mixture of coffee (with milk) and 
chocolate. The Emperor Napoleon was as fond 
of the same mixture as he was of Chambertin; and, 
in truth, I do not know a draught which so perfectly 


72 TABLE TRAITS 


soothes and revives as that of hot, well-frothed 
“choca.” 

Substances mixed with coffee, or substitutes for 
the berry altogether, have been tried with various 
degrees of success. Roasted acorns have been made 
to pass for it when ground. There is more chicory 
than coffee consumed at the present time in France; 
and the infusion of the lupin does duty for it at poor 
hearths in Flanders; as that of roasted rye (the 
nearest resemblance to coffee) does in America. 
Experimentalists say, that an excellent substitute for 
coffee may be made from asparagus; and Frankfort, 
alarmed lest the complications of the “ Eastern Ques- 
tion”’ should deprive it of the facilities for procuring 
the berry as heretofore, is gravely consulting as to 
whether asparagus coffee may be a beverage likely 
to be acceptable as a substitute for the much prized 
“ demi-tasse.” 


CHOCOLATE 


FERDINAND CoRTEz went to Mexico in search of 
gold; but the first discovery he made was of choco- 
late. The discovery was not welcomed ecclesias- 
tically, as coffee was. This new substance was 
considered a sort of wicked luxury, at least for 
monks, who were among the earliest to adopt it, 
but who were solemnly warned against its supposed 
peculiar effects. The moralists quite as eagerly 
condemned it; andin England Roger North angrily 
asserted, that “the use of coffee-houses seems much 
improved by a new invention, called ‘chocolate- 
houses,’ for the benefit of rooks and cullies of qual- 


BREAKFAST 73 


ity, where gambling is added to all the rest, and the 
summons of W seldom fails ; as if the devil had 
erected a new university, and these were the colleges 
of its professors, as well as his schools of discipline.” 
The Stuart jealousy of these localities, where free 
discussion was amply enjoyed, seems to have in- 
fluenced the attorney-general of James II.; for, 
although they may not have been frequented, he 
says, by “the factious gentry he so much dreaded,” 
he adds, “This way of passing time might have been 
stopped at first, before people had possessed them- 
selves of some convenience from them of meeting for 
short despatches, and passing evenings with small 
expenses.’ Of what chiefly recommended these 
places, the stern official thus made a grievance. 
Chocolate (or, as the Mexicans term it, chocolalt) 
is the popular name for the seeds of the cocoa, or, 
more correctly, the cacao, plant, in a prepared state, 
generally with sugar and cmnamon. The Mexicans 
improve the flavour of the inferior sorts of cacao 
seeds by burying them in the earth for a month, and 
allowing them to ferment. The nutritious quality of 
either cacao or chocolate is entirely owing to the oil 
or butter of cacao which it contains. Cacao-nibs, the 
best form of taking this production, are the seeds 
roughly crushed. When the seed is crushed be- 
tween rollers, the result is flake cacao. Common 
cacao is the seed reduced to a paste, and pressed 
into cakes. The cheap kinds of chocolate are said 
to be largely adulterated with lard, sago, and red 
lead, —a pernicious mixture for healthy stomachs ; 
but what must it be for weak stomachs craving for 
food at once nutritious and easy of digestion? The 





74 TABLE TRAITS 


“patent”? chocolates of the shops are nothing more 
than various modes of preparing the cacao seeds. 

The ladies of Mexico are so excessively fond of 
chocolate, that they not only take it several times 
during the day, but they occasionally have it brought 
to them in church, and during the service. A cup 
of good chocolate may, indeed, afford the drinker 
strength and patience to undergo a bad sermon. 
The bishops opposed it for a time, but they at length 
closed their eyes to the practice. I am afraid there is 
no chance of the fashion being introduced into Eng- 
land. The advantages would be acknowledged ; but 
then there would be a savour of popery detected about 
it, that would inevitably cause its rejection. The 
Church herself found a boon in this exquisite sup- 
porter of strength. The monks took it of a morning 
before celebrating mass, even in Lent. The orthodox 
and strong-stomached raised a dreadful cry at the 
scandal; but Escobar metaphysically proved, that 
chocolate made with water did not break a fast; 
thus establishing the ancient maxim, “ Liguzdum non 
Jrangit jejunium.” 

Spain welcomed the gift of chocolate made her by 
Mexico with as much enthusiasm as she did that of 
gold by Peru; the metal she soon squandered, but 
chocolate is still to be found in abundance in the 
Peninsula; it is an especial favourite with ladies and 
monks, and it always appears on occasions when 
courtesy requires that refreshments be offered. The 
Spanish monks sent presents of it to their brethren 
in French monasteries ; and Anne of Austria, daugh- 
ter of Philip II. of Spain, when she brought across 
the Pyrenees her hand, but not her heart, to the 


BREAKFAST 76 


unenergetic Louis XIII., brought a supply of choco- 
late therewith; and henceforth it became an estab- 
lished fact. In the days of the regency it was far 
more commonly consumed than coffee; for it was 
then taken as an agreeable aliment, while coffee was 
still looked upon as a somewhat strange beverage, 
but certainly akin to luxury. In the opinion of Lin- 
nzus it must have surpassed all other nutritious 
preparations, or that naturalist would hardly have 
conferred upon it, as he did, the proud name of 
Theobroma, “food for the gods!” 

Invalids will do well to remember that chocolate 
made with vanilla is indigestible, and injurious to the 
nerves. Indeed, there are few stomachs at all that 
can bear chocolate as a daily meal. It is a highly 
concentrated aliment ; and all such cease to act nutri- 
tiously if taken into constant use. 

We will now look into some of those famous re- 
sorts of bygone days, where coffee and chocolate 
were prepared, and wit was bright and spontaneous. 


The Old Coftee-Houses 


Tue Grecian appears to have been the oldest of 
the better-known coffee-houses, and to have lasted 
the longest. It was opened by Constantine, a Gre- 
cian, “living in Threadneedle Street, over against St. 
Christopher’s Church,” in the early part of the last 
half of the seventeenth century. Its career came to 
a close toward the middle of the nineteenth century, 
namely, in 1843, when the Grecian Coffee-house, 
then in Devereux Court, Strand, where it had existed 
for very many years, was converted into the “ Grecian 
Chambers,” or lodgings for bachelors. 

Constantine not only sold “the right Turkey cof- 
fee berry, or chocolate,” but gave instructions how 
to “prepare the said liquors gratis.” The Grecian 
was the resort rather of the learned than the dissi- 
pated. The antiquarians sat at its tables; and, de- 
spising the news of the day, discussed the events of 
the Trojan War, and similar lively, but remote mat- 
ters. The laborious trifling was ridiculed by the 
satirists ; and it is clear that there were some pedants 
as well as philosophers there. It was a time when 
both sages and sciolists wore swords; and it is on 
record that two friendly scholars, sipping their coffee 
at the Grecian, became enemies in argument, the 


subject of which was the accent of a Greek word. 
76 


THE OLD COFFEE- HOUSES ui 


Whatever the accent ought to have been, the quarrel 
was acute, and its conclusion grave. The scholars 
rushed into Devereux Court, drew their swords, and, 
as one was run through the body and killed on the 
spot, it is to be supposed that he was necessarily 
wrong. But the duel was the strangest method of 
settling a question in grammar that I ever heard of. 
Still it was rather the scholars than the rakes who 
patronised the Grecian; and there were to be found 
the Committee of the Royal Society, and Oxford pro- 
fessors, enjoying their leisure and hot cups, after 
philosophical discussion and scientific lecturing ; and 
even the Privy Council Board sometimes assembled 
there to take coffee after council. 

The “coffee-houses,” which were resorted to for 
mere conversation as well as coffee, began on a first 
floor; they were the seed, as it were, whence has 
arisen the political and exclusive “club” of the 
present day. The advantages of association were 
first experienced in coffee-houses; but at the same 
time was felt the annoyance caused by intrusive and 
unwelcome strangers. The club, with its ballot-box 
to settle elections of members, was the natural result. 

William Urwin’s coffee-house, known as “ Will’s,”’ 
from its owner’s name, and recognised as the “ Wits’, ” 
from its company, was on the first floor of the house 
at the west corner of Bow Street and Russell Street, 
Covent Garden. In the last half of the seventeenth 
century, it was at the height of its good fortune and 
reputation. The shop beneath it was kept by a 
woollen-draper. 

Tom Brown says that a wit was set up at a small 
cost; he was made by “peeping once a day in at 


78 TABLE TRAITS 


Will’s,’ and by relating “two or three second-hand 
sayings.” It was at Will’s that Dryden “ peda- 
gogued” without restraint, accepted flattery without 
a blush, and praised with happy complacency the per- 
fection of his own works. He was the great attrac-. 
tion of the place, and his presence there of an evening 
filled the room with admiring listeners, or indiscreet 
adulators. . Dryden had the good sense to retire 
early, when the tables were full, and he knew he had 
made a favourable impression, which the company 
might improve in his absence. Addison, more given 
to jolly fellowship, sat late with those who tarried to 
drink. Pepys, recording his first visit, in February, 
1663-64, says that he stepped in on his way to fetch 
his wife, “where Dryden the poet (I knew at Cam- 
bridge), and all the wits of the town, and Harris the 
player, and Mr. Hoole of our college. And had I 
had time then, as I could at other times, it will be 
good coming thither; for there I perceive is very 
witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry ; 
and, as it was late, they were all ready to go away.” 
The reign of Dryden at Will’s was not, however, 
without its pains. Occasionally, a daring stranger, 
like young Lockier, raw from the country, would 
object to the dicta of the despot. Thus, when Dry- 
den praised his ‘Mac Flecknoe,” as the first satire 
“written in heroics,” the future dean timidly sug- 
gested that the “ Lutrin” and the “ Secchia Rapita” 
‘were so written; and Dryden acknowledged that his 
corrector was right. The London beaux would have 
been afraid, or incapable, of setting Dryden right ; 
they were sufficiently happy if they were but per- 
mitted to dip their fingers into the poet’s snuff-box, 


nebyiGd 
swords TS Qatbiwind ss mos sens eototS 

































Will's,” and ts relating ufwo ¢ or A | 
sayings.” It was at Will’s that Dryden 
gogued” without restraint, accepted flattery witho 
a blush, and praised with happy complacency: the pe 
fection of his own works, He was the great atth 
tion of the place, and his presence there of an evening 
filled the room with admiring listeners, or indis 
adulators. _ Dryden had the good sense to retin 
early, when the tables were full, and he knew he hi 
made a favourable impression, which the compat 
might improve in his absence, Addisen, more pit 
to jolly fellowship, sat late with those who tarvied 
drink, Pepys, recording his first visit, m ¥ Taary 
1663-64, says that he stepped in on his way to é 
his wife, “where Dryden the poet (1 knew at © 
bridge), and all the wits of the town, and Harris tl 2, 
player, and Mr. Hoole of our college, And had & 
had time then, as I could at other times; it) ill be 
go A coming thither; for there I perceime- 
itty and pleasant discourse. But I coukt het y 
aa as it was late, they were all ready to som 
The reign of D Ge len at Will's was not, 
without its pas. Occasionally, a daniageg we: eT; 
like young Likert, fam Pee tie CONTR: a ; — 
object to the dicta @ tie Cire pant, Thes, ¥ . Dry- 
den praised his “* Mac rh eh aretin as the frst 


‘were so written; and vane sckcoweaall 

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THE OLD COFFEE-HOUSES 79 


and, at a separate table, listen to the criticisms 
uttered by the graver authorities who were seated 
round another, at the upper end of the room, Of 
the disputes that there arose, “glorious John” was 
arbiter; for his particular use a chair was especially 
reserved ; therein enthroned, he sat by the hearth or 
the balcony, according to the season, and delivered 
judgments which were not always final. 

No man was better qualified to do so, for the 
“specialty” of Will’s Coffee-house was _ poetry. 
Songs, epigrams, and satires circulated from table 
to table; and the wits judged plays, even Dryden’s, 
until the playwrights began to satirise the wits. 
With Dryden, Will’s lost some of its dignity. Late 
hours, card-playing, and politics; poets more didactic 
in their verse, and essayists more instructive in their 
prose, than in their daily practice; “dissipateurs ” 
like Addison, and peers who shared in Addison’s 
lower tastes, without either his talent or occa- 
sional refinement, spoiled the character of Will’s, 
where, by the way, Pope had been introduced by 
Sir Charles Wogan, though, years before, in his 
youth, he had been proud to follow old Wycherly 
about from coffee-house to coffee-house; and then 
Button’s attracted the better portion of the com- 
pany, and left Will’s to the vulgar and the witless. 

Button’s Coffee-house was so named from its 
original proprietor, who had been a servant of the 
Countess of Warwick, the wife of Addison. It was 
situated in Great Russell Street, on the south side, 
about two doors from Covent Garden. What Dryden 
had been at Will’s, Addison was at Button’s. There, 
— after writing during the morning at his house in 


80 TABLE TRAITS 


St. James’s Place, where his breakfast-table was 
attended by such men as Steele, Budgell, Philips, 
Carey, Davenant, and Colonel Brett, with some off 
whom he generally dined at a tavern, — he was to be 
found of an evening, until the supper hour called him 
and his companions to some other tavern, where, if 
not at Button’s, they made a night of it. Pope was 
of the company for almost a year, but left it because 
the late hours injured his health; and furthermore, 
perhaps, for the reason that his irritable temper had 
rendered him unpopular, and that he had so provoked 
Ambrose Philips that the latter suspended a birchen 
rod over Pope’s usual seat, in intimation of what the 
ordinary occupant would get if he ventured into it. 
The Buttonians were famous for the fierceness of 
their criticism, but it appears to have been altogether 
a better organised establishment than Will’s; for 
while the parish registers show that the landlord of 
the latter was fined for misdemeanour, the vestry- 
books of St. Paul (Covent Garden) prove that Button 
paid “for two places in the pew No. 18, on the south 
side of the north aisle, £2 2s.;”’ and charity leads 
us to conclude that Daniel and his wife occupied the 
places so paid for, and were orthodox as well as loyal. 
The “Lion’s Head” of the Guardian, which was put 
up at Button’s, over the box destined to receive con- 
tributions for the editor, is now at Woburn, in the 
possession of the Duke of Bedford. 

Of coffee-houses that went by the name of “Tom’s”’ 
there were three. At the one in Birchin Lane, Gar- 
rick occasionally appeared among the young mer- 
chants; and Chatterton, before despair slew even 
ambition, more than once dined. At the second 


THE OLD COFFEE - HOUSES 81 


house so called, in Devereux Court, many of the 
scholars, critics, and scientific men of the last century 
used to congregate. There Akenside essayed to rule 
over the tables as Dryden had done at Will's, and 
Addison at Button’s; but his imperious rule was 
often overthrown by “flat rebellion.” Zhe Tom’s 
was opposite Button’s, and stood on the north side of 
Great Russell Street, No. 17. It received its name 
from the Christian appellation of its master, Thomas 
West, who committed suicide in 1722. If guests 
gained celebrity in the latter days at Will’s for writ- 
ing a ‘“‘posie for a ring,’ so at Tom’s Mr. Ince was 
held in due respect, for the reason that he had com- 
posed a solitary paper for the Sectator. It was a 
place where the tables were generally crowded from 
the time of Queen Anne to that of George III. 
Seven hundred of the nobility, foreign ministers, 
gentry, and geniuses of the age, subscribed a guinea 
each, in 1714, for the erection of a card-room; and 
this fact, with the additional one that, only four years 
later, an enlarged room for cards and conversation 
was constructed, may serve to show by what sort of 
people, and for what particular purposes, Tom’s was 
patronised. 

At the time that White’s Chocolate-house was 
opened at the bottom of St. James’s Street, —the 
close ‘of the last century, — it was probably thought 
vulgar; for there was a garden attached, and it had 
a suburban air. At the tables in the house or garden 
more than one highwayman took his chocolate, or 
threw his main, before he quietly mounted his horse 
and rode slowly down Piccadilly toward Bagshot. 
Before the establishment was burned down, in 1733, 


82 | TABLE TRAITS 


it was famous rather for intensity of gaming than 
_excellence of chocolate. It arose from its ashes, and - 
settled, at the top of the street, into a fixedness of 
fashion that has never swerved. Gallantry, pleasure, 
and entertainment were the characteristics of the 
place. The celebrated Lord Chesterfield there 
“oamed, and pronounced witticisms among the boys 
of quality.” Steele dated all his love-news in the 
Tatler from White’s. It was stigmatised as “the 
common rendezvous of infamous sharpers and noble 
cullies ;”? and bets were laid to the effect that Sir 
William Burdett, one of its members, would be the 
first baronet who would be hanged. The gambling 
went on till dawn of day; and Pelham, when prime 
minister, was not ashamed to divide his time between 
his official table and the picquet-table at White’s. 
Selwyn, like Chesterfield, enlivened the room with 
his wit. As a sample of the spirit of betting which 
prevailed, Walpole quotes “(a good story made at 
White’s.” A man dropped down dead at the door, 
and was carried in; the club immediately made bets 
whether he was dead or not, and, when they were 
going to bleed him, the wagerers for his death inter- 
posed, and said it would affect the fairness of the 
bet ! 

Some of the old rules of the houses are rich in 
“table traits.” Thus, in 1736, every member was 
required to pay an extra guinea a year “toward hav- 
ing a good cook.’”’ The supper was on table at ten 
o'clock ; the bill at twelve. In 1758, it was agreed 
that he who transgressed the rules for balloting 
should pay the supper reckoning. In 1797 we find, 
“ Dinner at 10s. 6d. per head (malt liquor, biscuits, 


. 


THE OLD COFFEE- HOUSES 83 


oranges, apples, and olives included), to be on table 
at six o'clock; the bill to be brought at nine.” 
“That no hot. suppers be provided, unless particu- 
larly ordered ; and then be paid for at the rate of 8s. 
per head. That in one of the rooms there be laid 
every night (from the queen’s to the king’s birthday) 
a table, with cold meat, oysters, etc. Each person 
partaking thereof to pay 4s., malt liquors only in- 
cluded.” 

Colley Cibber was a member, but, as it would 
seem, an honorary one only, who dined with the 
manager of the club, and was tolerated afterward by 
the company for the sake of his wit. Mr. Cunning- 
ham states, that at the supper given by the club in 
1814, at Burlington House, to the allied sovereigns, 
there were covers laid for 2,400 people, and that the 
cost was “ 49,849 2s.6d.” “Three weeks after this 
(July 6, 1814), the club gave a dinner to the Duke of 
Wellington, which cost 42,840 10s. 9d.” The dinner 
given, in the month of February of the present year, 
to Prince George of Cambridge, was one not to wel- 
come a victorious warrior, but to cheer an untried, 
about to go forth to show himself worthy of his spurs. 
White’s ceased to be an open chocolate-house in 
1736, from which period it has been as private an 
establishment as a club can be said to be. 

The politicians had their coffée-houses as well as 
the wits. The Cocoa Tree, in St. James’s Street, 
was the Tory house in the reign of Queen Anne. 
The St. James’s was the Whig house. It was a 
well-frequented house in the latter days of George II., 
when Gibbon recorded his surprise at seeing a score 
or two of the noblest and wealthiest in the land, 


84 TABLE TRAITS 


seated in a noisy coffee-room, at little tables covered 
by small napkins, supping off cold meat or sand- 
wiches, and finishing with strong punch and confused 
politics. 

The St. James’s Coffee-house ranked Addison, 
Swift, Steele, and, subsequently, Goldsmith and Gar- 
rick, among its adztwés. It had a more solid practi- 
cal reputation than any of the other coffee-houses ; 
for within its walls Goldsmith’s poem of “ Retalia- 
tion” originated. But politics was its “staple;” 
and poor politicians seem to have been among its 
members, seeing that many of them were in arrears 
with their subscriptions; but these were: probably 
the outer-room men; for the magnates, who were 
accustomed to sit and watch the line of Bourbon, 
within the steam of the great coffee-pot, were doubt- 
less punctual in their payments ere they could have 
earned the privilege. And yet their poetical acumen 
was often more correct than their political discern- 
ment; for while the company at Button’s ascribed 
the “ Town Eclogues”’ to Gay, the coffee-drinkers at 
St. James’s were unanimous in giving them to a lady 
of quality. 

Of the coffee-houses of a second order, the Bed- 
ford, in Covent Garden, was probably the first ; but, 
for good fellowship, it equalled any of the more exclu- 
sive houses ; for Garrick, and Quin, and Murphy, and 
Foote, were of the company. Wit was the serious 
occupation of all its members; and it never gave 
any of them serious trouble to produce in abundance. 
Quin, above all, was brilliant in the double achieve- 
ments of Epicureanism and sparkling repartee. Gar- 
rick, in allusion to the sentiments often expressed 


THE OLD COFFEE - HOUSES 85 


here by his brother actor, wrote the epigrammatic 
lines, supposed to be uttered by Quin, in reference 
to a discussion on embalming the dead, and which 
will be found in a subsequent chapter, under the 
head of “ Table Traits of the Last Century.” 

AZsopus, the actor, who was to Cicero what Quin 
was to George the Third, —he “taught the boy to 
speak,” — A¢tsopus was as great an epicure, in his 
way, as Quin himself. It is related of him, that one 
day he dined off a costly dish of birds, the whole of 
which, when living, had been taught either to sing 
or speak. Atsopus was as fond of such a dish as 
his fellow comedian, Quin, was of mullet ; for which, 
and for some other of his favourite morceaux, he 
used to say that a man ought to have a swallow as 
long as from London to Botany Bay, and palate all 
the way! When the fish in question was in season, 
his first inquiry of the servant who used to awaken 
him was, “Is there any mullet in the market this 
morning, John?” and if John replied in the negative, 
his master’s reported rejoinder was, “Then call me 
at nine to-morrow, John.”’ 

The Bedford Coffee-house had its disadvantages, as 
when bullies, like Tiger Roach, endeavoured to hold 
sovereignty over the members. But usurpers like 
the Tiger were deposed as easily by the cane as by 
the sword; but such occurrences marred the peace 
of the coffee-house, nevertheless. It was, indeed, a 
strange company that sometimes was to be found 
within these houses. At Batem’s, the city house, 
patronised by Blackmore, the brother of Lord South- 
well was to be found enacting the parasite, and exist- 
ing by the aid of men who thought his wit worth 


86 TABLE TRAITS 


paying for. Child’s Coffee-house, St. Paul’s Church- 
yard, was patronised by the clergy, who assembled 
there, especially the younger clergy, in gowns, cas- 
socks, and scarfs, smoked till they were invisible, 
and obtained the honorary appellation of “ Doctor” 
from the waiters. Clerical visitants were also to 
be found at the Smyrna, in Pall Mall. Swift was 
often there with Prior; and the politics of the day 
were so loudly discussed, that the chairmen and por- 
ters in waiting outside used to derive that sort of 
edification therefrom which is now to be had in 
the cheap weekly periodicals. Garraway’s takes us 
once more into the city. Garway, as the original 
proprietor was called, was one of the earliest sellers 
of tea in London; and his house was frequented by 
nobles who had business in the city, who attended 
the lotteries at his house, or who wished to partake 
of his tea and coffee. Foreign bankers and minis- 
ters patronised Robin’s; the buyers and sellers of 
stock collected at Jonathan’s; and the shipping in- 
terest went, as now, to Lloyd’s. All these places 
were in full activity of business and coffee-drinking 
in the reign of Queen Anne. Finally, the lawyers 
crowded Squire’s, in Fulwood’s Rents; and there, 
it will be remembered, Sir Roger de Coverley smoked 
a pipe, over a dish of coffee, with the Spectator. But 
enough of these places, whose names are more famil- 
lar to many of us than their whereabout, but whose 
connection with what may be called the table-life of 
past times gives me warrant for the notice of them, 
with which, perhaps, I have only troubled the reader. 
I will only add, that the ceremony of serving choco- 
late was never such a solemnity in England as in 


THE OLD COFFEE - HOUSES 87 


France. In the latter country, as late as the days 
of Louis XVI., a “man of condition” required no 
less than four footmen, each with two watches in his 
fob, according to the fashion, to help him to take a 
single cup of chocolate. One bore the tray, and one 
the chocolate-pot, a third presented the cup, and a 
fourth stood in waiting with a napkin! and all this 
coil to carry a morning draught to a poor wretch, 
whose red heels to his shoes were symbols of the 
rank which gave him the privilege of being helpless. 

The old coffee-houses were not simply resorts for 
the critics, the politicians, and the fine gentlemen. 
Gay, writing to Congreve, in 1715, says, “ Amidst 
clouds of tobacco, at a coffee-house, I write this 
letter. There is a grand revolution at Will’s. Moira 
has quitted for a coffee-house in the city; and Tit- 
comb is restored, to the great joy of Cromwell, who 
was at a great loss for a person to converse with upon 
the Fathers and church history. The knowledge I 
gain from him is entirely in painting and poetry; 
and Mr. Pope owes all his skill in astronomy to him 
and Mr. Whiston.” Pope learnt his astronomy by 
the assistance of what Moore calls, “the sun of the 
table ;” for, adding a postscript to Gay’s letter to 
Congreve, he says, “I sit up till two o’clock, over 
Burgundy and Champagne.”’ Ten years before, the 
coffee-house and London life had less charms for 
him. Witness the paragraph in the letter to Wych- 
erly, in 1705, to this effect: “I have now changed 
the scene from town to country, — from Will’s Coffee- 
house to Windsor Forest. I found no other differ- 
ence than this betwixt the common town wits and 
the downright country fools, that the first are partly 


83 TABLE TRAITS 


in the wrong, with a little more flourish and gaiety ; 
and the last, neither in the right nor the wrong, but 
confirmed in a stupid settled medium, betwixt both.” 
But, ten years later than the period of Pope’s post- 
script to Congreve, in which he boasted of sitting over 
wine during the “wee short hours ayont the twal’,” 
as Burns calls them, we find the boaster stricken. 
Swift, writing to him, in 1726, remarks, “I always 
apprehend most for you after a great dinner; for the 
least transgression of yours, if it be only two bits and 
one sup more than your stint, is a great debauch, for 
which you certainly pay more than those sots who 
are carried drunk to bed.” 

In England, the chocolate and coffee-houses were 
not confined to the metropolis and its rather rakish 
inhabitants. The universities had their coffee-houses, 
as London had ; and the company there, albeit a/umnz 
of the various colleges, do not appear to have been 
remarkable for refinement. Doctor Ewins, at Cam- 
bridge, in the last century, acquired the ill-will both 
of town and gown for exercising a sort of censorship 
over their conduct. According to Cole, the anti- 
quary, they needed it; for he says, with especial 
allusion to the undergraduates, that “they never 
were more licentious, riotous, and debauched. They 
often broke the doctor’s windows,” he adds, “as they 
said he had been caught listening on their staircases 
and (at their) doors.’”’ The doctor, like his adver- 
saries, was in the habit of visiting the Union Coffee- 
house, opposite St. Radigund’s (or Jesus) Lane, —a 
fashionable rendezvous. He was there one night 
about Christmas, 1771, or January, 1772, “when 
some fellow commoners, who owed him a grudge, 


THE OLD COFFEE - HOUSES 89 


sitting in the box hear him, in order to affront him, 
pretended to call their dog ‘ Squintum,’ and frequently 
repeated the name very loudly in the coffee-house; 
and, in their joviality, swore many oaths, and caressed 
their dog. Doctor Ewins, as did his father, squinted 
very much, as did Whitefield, the Methodist teacher, 
who was vulgarly called Doctor Squintum, from the 
blemish in his eyes. Doctor Ewins was sufficiently 
mortified to be so affronted in public. However, he 
carefully marked down the number of oaths sworn 
by these gentlemen, whom he made to pay severely 
the penalty of five shillings for each oath, which 
amounted to a good round sum.” The next week, 
ballad-singers sang, in the streets of Cambridge, a 
ballad, which they gave away to all who would accept 
a copy, and from which the following verses are ex- 
tracted. They will show—if nothing else — that 
the university coffee-house poet was less elegant than 
Horace, and that the “well of English” into which 
he had dipped was not altogether “ undefiled :” 


“ Of all the blockheads in the Town, 
That strut and bully up and down, 
And bring complaints against the Gown, 
There’s none like Doctor Squintum. 


“ With gimlet eyes and dapper wig, 
This Justice thinks he looks so big: 
A most infernal stupid gig 
Is this same Doctor Squintum. 


‘‘ What pedlar can forbear to grin, 
Before his Worship that has been, 
To think what folly lurks within 
This Just Ass Doctor Squintum?” 


go TABLE TRAITS 


Old René d’Anjou used to say, that, as soon as a 
man had breakfasted, it was his bounden duty to 
devote himself to the great business of the day, — 
think of dinner. We will in some wise follow the 
instructions given, — first, however, saying a word or 
two upon French coffee-houses, and then upon those 
who naturally take precedence of “dinners,” — the 
cooks by whom dinners are prepared. 


The French Cafés 


In the reign of Louis XV. there were not less than 
six hundred cafés in Paris. London, at the same 
period, could not count as many dozens. Under 
Louis Napoleon, the cafés have reached to the amaz- 
ing number of between three and four thousand. 
All these establishments acknowledge the Café Pro- 
cope as the founder of the dynasty, although, indeed, 
there were coffee-vendors in Paris before the time of 
the accomplished Sicilian. “ Vixerunt fortes ante 
Agamemnona.” 

The consumption of coffee in Paris, at the period 
of the breaking out of the Revolution, was something 
-enormous. The French West Indian Islands fur- 
nished eighty millions of pounds annually, and this 
was irrespective of what was derived from the East. 
The two sources together were not sufficient to 
supply the kingdom. Thence adulterations, fortunes 
to the adulterators, and that supremacy of chicory, 
which has destroyed the well-earned reputation of 
French coffee. 

I have alreadysspoken of the Café Procope, and 
here I will only add an anecdote illustrative of the 
scenes that sometimes occurred there, and of the 
national character generally in the reign of Louis 
XV. One afternoon that M. de Saint Foix was 

91 + 


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seated at his usual table, an officer of the King’s 
Body Guard entered, sat down, and ordered “a cup 
of coffee, with milk, and a roll,” adding, “It will 
serve me for a dinner!” At this Saint Foix remarked 
aloud, that “a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, 
was a confoundedly poor dinner.” The officer re- 
monstrated; Saint Foix reiterated his remark, and 
again and again declared, that nothing the gallant 
officer could say to the contrary would convince him 
that a cup of coffee, with milk, and a roll, was not a 
confoundedly poor dinner. Thereupon a challenge 
was given and accepted, and the whole of the per- 
sons present adjourned as spectators of a fight, which 
ended by Saint Foix receiving a wound in the arm. 
“That is all very well,” said the wounded combatant ; 
“but I call you to witness, gentlemen, that I am still 
profoundly convinced, that a cup of coffee, with milk, 
and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner!” At this 
moment, the principals were arrested, and carried 
before the Duke de Noailles, in whose presence 
Saint Foix, without waiting to be questioned, said, 
“ Monseigneur, I had not the slightest intention 
of offending the gallant officer, who, I doubt not, is 
an honourable man; but your Excellency can never 
prevent my asserting, that a cup of coffee, with milk, 
and a roll, is a confoundedly poor dinner.” ‘ Why, 
so it is,’ said the duke. “Then I am not in the 
wrong,” remarked Saint Foix; ‘anda cup of coffee,” 
—at these words magistrates, delinquents, and audi- 
tory burst into a roar of laughter, and the antagonists 
became friends. It was a more bloodless issue than 
that which occurred to Michel Lepelletier, in later 
years, at the Café Février. He was seated at dinner 


THE FRENCH CAFES 93 


there, when an ex-garde-du-corps, named Paris, ap- 
proached him, inquired if he were the Lepelletier 
who had voted for the death of Louis XVI., and, 
receiving an affirmative reply, drew forth a dagger, 
and swiftly slew him on the spot. 

Before Procope, the Armenian, Pascal, sold coffee 
at the Fair of St. Germain, at three halfpence a cup ; 
and the beverage was sung by the poet Thomas in 
terms not exactly like those with which Delille sub- 
sequently sang the virtues of the tree. The French 
coffee-houses at once gained the popularity to which 
they aspired. To Pascal succeeded Maliban, and 
then Gregoire opened his establishment in the Rue 
Mazarin, in the vicinity of players and playgoers. 
At the same time, there was a man in Paris, called 
“the lame Candiot,’ who carried ready-made coffee 
about from door to door, and sold it for a penny per 
cup, sugar included. The café at the foot of the 
bridge of Notre Dame was founded by Joseph; that 
at the foot of the bridge of St. Michel, by Etienne; 
and both of these are more ancient than that of Pro- 
cope, who was the first, however, who made a fortune 
by his speculation. The Quai de |’Ecole had its 
establishment (the Café Manoury), which I believe 
still exists, as does the Café de la Régence, which 
dates from the time of the Regent Duke of Orléans, 
and where Rousseau used to play at chess, and 
appeared in his Armenian costume. It was also fre- 
quented, zzcog., by the Emperor Joseph. The oldest 
café in the Palais Royal is the celebrated Café de 
Foy, so called from the name of its founder. Carl 
Vernet was one of its most constant patrons. He 
was there on one occasion, when some repairs were 


94 TABLE TRAITS 


going on, and, in his impatience, he flung a wet 
colouring brush from him, which struck the ceiling 
and left a spot. He immediatcly ascended the 
- Jadder, and with a touch of his finger converted the 
stain into a swallow; and his handiwork was still to 
be seen on the ceiling, when I was last in Paris. It 
was before the Café de Foy that Camille Desmoulins 
harangued the mob, in July, 1789, with such effect, 

that they took up arms, destroyed the Bastile, and 
inaugurated the Revolution. 

The Café de Valois will long be remembered for 
its aristocratic character ; that of Montansier, on the 
other hand, was remarkable for the coarseness of its 
frequenters, and the violence with which they dis- 
cussed politics, especially at the period of the Resto- 
ration. The Café du Caveau was more joyously 
noisy with its gay artists and broad songs. The 
Empire brought two establishments into popular 
favour, both of which appealed to the lovers of beauty’ 
as well as of coffee. The first was the Café du 
Bosquet, and the second the Café des Mille Colonnes, 
Each was celebrated for the magnificent attractions 
of the presiding lady, —the delle Limonadiére, as she 
was at first called, or the dame du comptoir, as refine- 
ment chose to name her. Madame Romain, at the 
Mille Colonnes, had a longer reign than her rival; 
and the lady was altogether a more remarkable 
person. In the reign of Louis XVIII., her seat was 
composed of the throne of Jerome, King of West- 
phalia, — which was sold by auction on the bank- 
ruptcy of his Majesty. Madame Romain descended 
from it, like a weary queen, to take refuge in a nun- 
nery; and, curiously enough, the ex-king has re- 


THE FRENCH CAFES 95 


covered his “throne,” which now figures, in the 
reduced aspect of a simple armchair, in the salon of 
his residence at the Palais Royal. After the abdica- 
tion of Madame Romain, the Mille Colonnes endeav- 
oured to secure success by very meretricious means. 
Girls of a brazen quality of beauty bore through the 
apartments flaming bowls of punch, usually taken 
after the coffee; and the beverage and the bearers 
were equally bad. 

As the Café Chrétien was once thoroughly Jacobin, 
so the Café Lemblin became entirely imperial, and 
was the focus of the opposition after the return of 
the Bourbons. It was famous for its chocolate, as 
well as for its coffee. When the Allies were at Paris, 
it was hardly safe for the officers to enter the Café 
Lemblin, and many scenes of violence are described 
as having occurred there, and many a duel was fought 
with fatal effect, after a café dispute between French 
and foreign officers, —and all for national honour. 
The Bourbon officers were far more insulting in the 
cafés to the ex-imperial “braves,” than the latter 
were to the invading captains, — and they generally 
paid dearly for their temerity. Finally,—for to 
name all the cafés in Paris would require an encyclo- 
pzedia, — it is worthy of notice that Tortoni’s, which 
is now a grave adjunct to the Bourse, first achieved 
success by the opposite process of billiard-playing. 
A broken-down provincial advocate, Spolar of 
Rennes, came to Paris with a bad character, and a 
capital cue; and the latter he handled so wonder- 
fully at the Café Tortoni, that all Paris went to 
witness his feats. Talleyrand patronised him, backed 
his playing, and gained no inconsiderable sum by the 


96 TABLE TRAITS 


cue-driving of Spolar, whose star culminated when 
he was appointed “ Professor of Billiards to Queen 
Hortense,” —an appointment which sounds strange, 
but which was thought natural enough at the time; 
and, considering all things, so it was. 

There is one feature in the French cafés which 
strikes an observer as he first contemplates it. I 
allude to the intensity, gravity, and extent of the 
domino-playing. A quartet party will spend half 
the evening at this mystery, with nothing to enliven 
it but the gentlest of conversation, and the lightest 
of beer, or a simple fetzt verre. The government 
wisely thinks that a grave domino-player can be 
given to neither immorality nor conspiracies. Buta 
British government proudly scorns to tolerate such 
insipidities in Britons. British tradesmen, at the 
end of the day, may be perfectly idle, spout blas- 
phemy, and get as drunk as they please, in any 
London tavern, provided they do not therewith break 
the peace; but, let the reprobates only remain obsti- 
nately sober, and play at dominoes, then they offend 
the immaculate justice of justices, and landlords and 
players are liable to be fined. So, on Sabbath nights, 
the working-classes have thrown open to their edifica- 
tion the gin-palaces, which invite not in vain; but if 
one of these same classes should, on the same Sun- 
day evening, knock at the religiously closed door of 
a so-called free library, the secretary's maid who 
answers the appeal would be pale with horror at the 
atrocity of the applicant. And what is the bewil- 
dered Briton to do? He looks in at church, where, 
if there be a few free seats, they have a look about 
them so as to make him understand that he is in his 


THE FRENCH CAFES 97 


fustian, and that he and the miserable sinners in 
their fine cloth are not on an equality in the house 
of God; and so he turns sighingly away, and goes 
where the law allows him, — to the house of gin. 

But, leaving the further consideration of these 
matters to my readers, let us now address ourselves 
to the sketching of a class whose most illustrious 
members have borne witness to their own excellency, 
not exactly according to the fashion spoken of by 
Shakespeare; namely, by putting a strange face on 
their own perfection. 


The Ancient Cook, and His Art 


It is an incontestable fact, that he who lives 
soberly does not depend upon his cook for the 
pleasure which he derives from his repast. Never- 
theless, the cook is one of the most important of 
personages; and even appetite, without him, would 
not be of the value that it is at present. A great 
artiste knows his vocation. When the cook of Louis 
XVIII. was reproached, by his Majesty’s physician, 
with ruining the royal health by savoury juices, the 
dignitary of the kitchen sententiously remarked, that 
it was the office of the cook to supply his Majesty 
with pleasant dishes, and that it was the duty of the 
doctor to enable the king to digest them. The divi- 
sion of labour, and the responsibilities of office, could 
not have been better defined. 

From old times the cook has had a proper sense of. 
the solemn importance of his wonderful art. The 
Coquus Gloriosus, in a fragment of Philemon, shows 
us what these artists were in the very olden time. 
He swears by Minerva that he is delighted at his 
success, and that he cooked a fish so exquisitely, that 
it returned him admiring and grateful looks from the 
frying-pan! He had not covered it with grated 
cheese, not disguised it with sauce; but he had 
treated it with such daintiness and delicacy, that, 

98 


THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART 99 


even when fully cooked, it lay on the dish as fresh- 
looking as if it had just been taken from the lake. 
This result seems to have been a rarity; for, when 
the fish was served up at table, the delighted guests 
tore it from one another, and a running struggle was 
kept up around the board to get possession of this 
exquisitely prepared morceau. ‘And yet,” says the 
cook, “I had nothing better to exhibit my talent 
upon than a wretched river fish, nourished in mud. 
But, O Jupiter Saviour! if I had only had at my 
disposal some of the fish of Attica or Argos, or a 
-conger from pleasant Sicyon, like those which Nep- 
tune serves to the gods in Olympus, why, the guests 
would have thought they had become divinities them- 
selves. Yes,” adds the culinary boaster, “I think I 
may say that I have discovered the principle of im- 
mortality, and that the odour of my dishes would 
recall life into the nostrils of the very dead.’”’ The 
resonant vaunt is not unlike that of Bechamel, who 
said that, with the sauce that he had invented, a man 
would experience nothing but delight in eating his 
own grandfather ! 

Hegesippus further illustrates the vanity of the 
genus coquorum of his days. In a dialogue between 
Syrus and his chef, the master declares that the 
culinary art appears to have reached its limit, and 
that he would fain hear something novel upon the 
subject. The cook’s reply admits us to an insight 
into ancient manners. “I am not one of those 
fellows,” says the personage in question, “who are 
content to suppose that they learn their art by wear- 
ing an apron for a couple of years. My study of the 
art has not been superficial: it has been the work of 


100 TABLE TRAITS 


my life; and I have learned the use and appliances 
of every herb that grows — for kitchen purposes. 
But I especially shine in getting up funeral dinners. 
When the mourners have returned from the doleful 
ceremony, it is I who introduce them to the mitigated 
affliction department. While they are yet in their 
mourning attire, I lift the lids of my kettles, and 
straightway the weepers begin to laugh. They sit 
down with their senses so enchanted, that every 
guest fancies himself at a wedding. If I can only 
have all I require, Syrus,’ adds the artist, “if my 
kitchen be only properly furnished, you will see 
renewed the scenes which used to take place on the 
coasts frequented by the sirens. It will be impos- 
sible for any one to pass the door; all who scent the 
process will be compelled, despite themselves, to 
stop. There they will stand, mute, open-mouthed, 
and nostrils extended; nor will it be possible to 
make them ‘move on,’ unless the police, coming to 
their aid, oom out the irresistible scent by plugging 
their noses.’ 

Posidippus shows us a ge master cook in- 
structing his pupils. Leucon is the name of the 
teacher; and the first truth he impresses on _ his 
young friend is, that the most precious sauce for the 
purpose of a cook is impudence. ‘ Boast away,” 
he says, “and never be tired of it] ) Poreaseuc 
logically remarks, “if there be many a captain under 
whose dragon-embossed cuirass lies a poor hare, why 
should not we, who kill hares, pass for better than we 
are, like the captains?’’? ‘A modest cook must be 
looked on,” he says, “as a contradiction in nature. 
If he be hired out to cook a dinner in another man’s 


THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART IOI 


house, he will only get considered in proportion to 
his impudence and overbearing conduct. If he be 
quiet and modest, he will be held as a pitiful cook.” 

Alexis, another artist, takes other and higher 
ground. He says, that in all the arts the resulting 
pleasure does not depend solely on those who exer- 
cise the art; there must be others who possess the 
science of enjoyment. This is true; and Alexis 
further adds, that the guest who keeps a dinner 
waiting, or a master who suddenly demands it before 
its time, are alike enemies to the art which Alexis 
professes. 

The earthly paradise of the early cooks was, un- 
questionably, among the Sybarites, — the people to 
whom the crumpling of a rose under the side on 
which they lay, gave exquisite pain. They were 
as self-luxurious as though the world was made for 
them alone, and they and the world were intended to 
last for ever. They would not admit into their city 
any persons whose professions entailed noise in the 
practice of them: the trunkmaker at the corner of 
St. Paul’s would have been flogged to death with 
thistle-down, if he had carried on his trade in Sybaris 
for an hour, and if a Sybarite could have been found 
with energy enough to wield the instrument of execu- 
tion! The crowing of one of the proscribed race of 
cocks once put all the gentlemen of the city into fits ; 
and, on another occasion, a Sybarite telling a friend 
how his nerves had been shaken by hearing the tools 
of some labouring men in another country strike 
against each other, at their work, the friend was so. 
overcome, that he merely exclaimed, “Good gra- 
cious!” and fainted away. 


102 TABLE TRAITS 


Athenzeus, borrowing, if I remember rightly, from 
one of the authors whose works were in that Alexan- 
drian library, the destruction of which by the Caliph 
Omar, Doctor Cumming tells us in his “ Finger of 
God,” is a circumstance at which he is rather glad 
than sorry, Athenzus mentions the visit of a 
Sybarite to Sparta, where he was invited to one of 
the public dinners, at which the citizens ate very 
black broth, in common, out of wooden bowls. Hav- 
ing tasted the national diet, he feebly uttered the 
Sybaritic expression for “Stap my vitals!” and 
convulsively remarked, that “he no longer wondered 
why the Lacedzemonians sought death in battle, see- 
ing that such a fate was preferable to life with such 
broth!” 

Certainly the public repasts of the Sybarites were 
of another quality. The giver of such repasts was 
enrolled among the benefactors of their country, and ° 
the cook who had distinguished himself was invested 
with a golden crown, and an opera ticket, that is, free 
admission to those public games where hired dancers 
voluptuously perverted time and the human form 
divine. 

I am afraid that all cooks in remote ages enjoyed 
but an indifferent reputation, and thoroughly de- 
served what they enjoyed. The comic Dionysius 
introduces one of the succulent brotherhood, im- 
pressing upon a young apprentice the propriety of 
stealing in houses where they were hired to cook 
dinners. The instruction is worthy of Professor 
Fagan of the Saffron Hill University. “Whatever 
you can prig,” says the elder rogue, “belongs to 
yourself, as long as you are in the house. When 


THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART 103 


you get past the porter into the street, it then be- 
comes my property. So fake away! (Bade detp’ duc) 
and look out for unconnected trifles.”’ 

And yet Athenzus asserts that nothing has so 
powerfully contributed to instil piety into the souls 
of men, as good cookery! His proof is, that when 
men devoured each other, they were beasts, — which 
is a self-evident proposition ; but that when they took 
to cooked meats, and were particular with regard to 
these, why, then alone they began to live cleanly, — 
which is a proposition by no means so self-evident. 
In his opinion, a man to be supremely happy only 
needed the gift of Ceres to Pandora, —a good ap- 
petite, and an irreproachable digestion. These are, 
doubtless, great portions of happiness; and if felicity 
can do without them,—which is questionable, — 
where they are not, comfort is absent, and a good 
conscience is hardly a sufficient compensation. 

If Sybaris was the paradise of cooks, Lacedzemon 
was their purgatory. They were blamed if men 
grew fat on their diet, and plump children were 
legally condemned to get spare again upon their 
gruel. The Romans, again, restored the cook to 
his proper place in society. He might be still a 
slave, and so were greater men than he; but he was 
the confidant of his master, and there were not a few 
who would have exchanged their liberty for such a 
post and chains. And who dare affirm that the 
coguus was not an officer of distinction? He who 
knows how to prepare food for digestion and delight, 
is a greater man, in one particular at least, than 
Achilles, who could go no farther in culinary science 
than turning the spit ; than Ulysses, who could light 


104 TABLE TRAITS 


fires and lay cloths with the dexterity of a Frankfort 
waiter; or than Patroclus, who could draw wine and 
drink it, but who knew no more how to make a stew, 
than he did how to solve the logarithms of Napier. 

When it is asserted that it was Cadmus, the grand- 
father of Bacchus, who first taught men how to eat 
as civilised beings should, it is thereby further inti- 
mated that good eating should be followed by good 
drinking. 

We have heard of cooks in monasteries who made 
dissertations on eternal flames by the heat of their 
own fires: so Timachidas, of Rhodes, made patties 
and poetry at the same stove, and both after a fash- 
ion to please their several admirers. Artemidorus 
was the Doctor Johnson of his own art, and wrote a 
kitchen lexicon for the benefit of students. Sicily 
especially was celebrated for its literary cooks, and 
Mithocecus wrote a treatise on the art; while Arches- 
tratus, the Syracusan, looking into causes and effects, 
meditated on stomachs as well as sauces, and first 
showed how digestion might be taught to wait on 
appetite. Then theoretical laymen came in to the aid 
of the practical cook, and gastronomists hit upon all 
sorts of strange ideas to help them to renewed enjoy- 
ments. Pithyllus, for instance, invented a sheath for 
the tongue, in order that he might swallow the hottest 
viands faster than other guests, who wisely preferred 
rather to slowly please the palate than suddenly sat- 
isfy the stomach. It is of Pithyllus the Dainty that 
it is related how, after meals, he used to clean his 
tongue by rubbing it with a piece of rough fish-skin ; 
and his taking up hot viands with his hand, like that 
of Gétz von Berlichingen, encased in a glove, is cited 


THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART 105 


as proof that the Greeks used no forks. The spoons 
of the Romans had a pointed end, at the extremity 
of the handle, for the purpose of picking fish from 
the shell. 

Then came the age when, if men had not appe- 
tites of nature’s making, they were made for them 
by the cooks; and the latter, in return, were crowned 
with flowers by the guests who had eaten largely, 
and had no fears of indigestion. The inventor of a 
new dish had a patent for its exclusive preparation 
fora year. But ere that time it had probably been 
forgotten in something more novel discovered by a 
Sicilian rival; for the Greeks looked on Sicily as the 
Parisians of the last century used to look on Langue- 
doc, —as the only place on earth where cooks were 
born and bred, and were worth the paying. The 
artists of both countries, and of the opposite ages 
mentioned, were especially skilled in the preparation 
of materials which were made to appear the things 
they were not ; and a seemingly grand dinner of fish, 
flesh, and fowl, was really fashioned out of the sup- 
plies furnished by the kitchen garden. The Greeks, 
however, never descended to the bad taste of which 
the diarists of the last century show the French to 
have been guilty; namely, in having wooden joints, 
carved and painted, placed upon their tables for show. 
Artificial flowers may be tolerated, but an artifi- 
cial sirlom made of a block of deal, would be very 
intolerable board indeed, particularly to the hungry 
guests, who saw the seemingly liberal fare, but who 
could make very little of the deal before them. 

In Sicily, the goddess of good cheer, Adephagia, 
had her especial altars, and thence, perhaps, the esti- 


106 TABLE TRAITS 


mation in which the Sicilian cooks were held, who 
prayed to her for inspiration. Her ministers were 
paid salaries as rich as the sauces they invented. 
Something like 4800 per annum formed the honora- 
rium of the learned and juicy gentleman. But he was 
not always to be had, even at that price; and the dis- 
gusted Languedocien who would not remain in the 
cuisine of the Duke of Richmond, when Governor of 
Ireland, for the sufficient reason that there was no 
opera in Dublin, had his prototype among his Sicilian 
predecessors. The jealousy of the culinary bonds- 
man in Greek households against the free cook from 
Sicily, must have been sometimes deadly in its 
results. 

The best-feed cook on record is the happy mortal 
to whom his master Antony gave a city, because he 
had cooked a repast which had called forth encomium 
from that dreadful jade, Cleopatra. 

But money was the last thing thought of by the 
wearied epicures of Rome, especially when what they 
gave belonged to somebody else. When Lucullus 
spent 41,000 sterling on a snug dinner for three, — 
himself, Czesar, and Pompey, —he doubtless spent 
his creditors’ money; at least, extravagant people 
generally do. Claudius dined often with six hundred 
guests, and the Roman people paid the cooks. The 
dinners of Vitellius cost that sacrilegious feeder up- 
wards of £3,000 each, but the bills were discharged 
by a levy on the public pocket. When Tiberius 
ordered several thousands sterling to be bestowed on 
the author of a piece wherein everything eatable was 
made to speak wittily, the author was really paid out 
of the popular pocket; and when Geta insisted on 


THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART 107 


having as many courses at each repast as there were 
letters in the alphabet, and all the viands at each 
course so named that their initials should be the 
same as that of the course itself, he was the last per- 
son who troubled himself about the payment for 
such extravagance. 

The cooks of such epicures must necessarily, how- 
ever, have been as despotic in the kitchen as their 
lord was in the saloon. The slaves there, who hur- 
ried to and fro, bearing their tributes of good things 
from the market-place, or distributing them according 
to his bidding, obeyed the cook’s very nod, nay, antic- 
ipated his very wishes. They were, in fact, the 
ministers of an awful sovereign. The cook was their 
lord paramount. The stewards possessed no little 
power; but when the fires were lighted, and the 
dinner had to be thought of, the head cook was the 
kitchen Jupiter; and when he spoke, obedience, 
silence, and trembling followed upon his word. 

From his raised platform, the arvchimagirus, as he 
was called, could overlook all the preparations, and 
with his tremendous spoon of office he could break 
the heads of his least skilful disciples, and taste the 
sauces seething in the remotest saucepans. The 
effect must have been quite pantomimic; and to com- 
plete it, there was only wanted a crash of discordant 
music to accompany the rapid descent of the gigantic 
spoon upon the skull or ribs of an offender. The 
work was done in presence of the gods, and scullions 
blew the fires under the gaze of the Lares, — sooty 
divinities to whom, the legend says, inferior cooks 
were sometimes sacrificed in the month of December. 
« But,” as Othello says, “that’s a fable!” 


108 TABLE TRAITS 


Great Roman kitchens were as well worth seeing, 
and perhaps were as often inspected by the curious 
and privileged, as that of the reform club. “Order 
reigned’”’ there quite as much as it did, according to 
Marshal Sebastiani, at Warsaw, amid the most abject 
slavery. Art and costliness were lavished upon the 
vessels, but the human beings there were exactly the 
things that were made the least account of. 

No doubt that the triumph of the art of the cook 
consisted in serving up an entire pig at once roasted 
and boiled. The elder Disraeli has shown from 
Archestratus how this was done. ‘The animal had 
been bled to death by a wound under the shoulder, 
whence, after copious effusion, the master-cook ex- 
tracted the entrails, washed them with wine, and 
hanged the animal by the feet. He crammed down 
the throat the stuffings already prepared. Then, 
covering the half of the pig with a paste of barley 
thickened with wine and oil, he put it in a small oven, 
or on a heated table of brass, where it was gently 
roasted with all due care. When the skin was 
browned, he boiled the other side, and then, taking 
away the barley paste, the pig was served up, at once 
boiled and roasted.” And such was the way by 
which the best of cooks spoiled the best of pigs. 

According to Plautus, cooks alone were privileged 
in the old days to carry knives in their girdles. In 
the “Aulularia,” old Euclio says to Congrio, the 
cook, “ Ad tres viros jam ego deferam tuum nomen,” 
“T’ll go and inform against you to the magistrates.” 
“Why so?” asks Congrio. “Because you carry a 
knife,” “Quza cultrum habes.’ ‘ Well,” says the 
artist, standing on his rights, ‘‘cocum decet,” “it is the 


THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART 10g 


sign of my profession.” From another of the many 
cooks of Plautus we learn, in the “ Menzchmei,” 
that, when a parasite was at table, his appetite was 
reckoned as equivalent to that of eight guests; and 
when Cylindrus is- ordered to prepare a dinner for 
Menzchmus, his “lady,” and the official parasite, 
“Then,” says the cook, “that’s as good as ten; for 
- your parasite does the work of eight :” 


‘Jam isti sunt decem, 
Nam parasitus octo hominum munus facile fungitur.” 


The musicians would appear to have lived as pleas- 
antly as the parasites. Simo remarks to Tranio, in 
the “ Mostellaria,”’ that he lives on the best the cooks 
and vintners can procure for him, —a real fiddler’s 
destiny : 

‘¢ Musice hercle agitis etatem: ita ut vos decet. 


Vino et victu, piscatu probe electili, 
Vitam colitis.” 


Stalino complains in the “ Casina,” that, clever as 
cooks are, they cannot put a little essence of love 
into all their dishes, —a sauce, he says, that would 
please everybody. Their reputation in Rome for 
stealing was much the same as that enjoyed by their 
Grecian brethren. The scene of the “Casina,” in- 
deed, is in Athens; but Olympio utters a Roman 
sentiment when he says, that cooks use their hands 
as much for larceny as cookery, and that wherever 
they are they bring double ruin, through extravagance 
and robbery, upon their masters: “ Udz sunt, duplice 
damno dominos multant.” This is further proved by 
the speech of Epidicus, in the comedy so called, 


IIo TABLE TRAITS 


2 


where that slave-cook speaks of his master’s purse 
as if it were game, to disembowel which, he says, he 
will use his professional knife: 


«“ Acutum cultrum habeo, senis qui exenterem 
Marsupium.” 


We learn something of the pay of a cook from a 
speech of one of the craft, in the “ Pseudolus.” 
Ballio, seeing a single practitioner remaining in the 
square to be hired, asks how it is that he has not 
been engaged. ‘“ Eloguar,” says the cook, “here is 
the reason: 


‘‘ He who, nowadays, comes here to hire cooks, 
No longer seeks the best, that is, the dearest, 
But some poor spoil-sauce who for nothing works. 
Therefore you see me here alone to-day. 
A poor drachma hath my brethren purchased ; 
But under a crown I cook a dish for no man. 
For ’twixt the common herd and me, you see, 
There is a diff’rence: they into a dish 
Fling whole meadows, and the guests they treat, sir, 
As though they were but oxen out at grass. 
Herbs season they with herbs, and grass with grass; 
And in the mess, garlic, coriander, fennel, 
Sorrel, rochet, beet-root, leeks, and greens, 
All go together, with a pound of benzoin, 
And mustard ditto, that compels the tears 
From out the eyes of those that have to mix it. 


If men are short-lived now, the reason’s plain: 
They put death into their stomachs, and so 

Of indigestion and bad cookery die. 

Their sauces but to think of, makes me shudder; 
Yet men will eat what asses would not bend to. 


Who of my dishes eats, obtains at least 
Two hundred happy years of life renew’d. 


THE ANCIENT COOK, AND HIS ART Ili 


I season Neptune’s fishes with a juice 

Made up of Cicilindrum, Muscadel, 

Sipolindrum, and Sancapatides. 

The odour of my mutton, nicely stuffed 

With Cicimandrum, Nappalopsides, 

And of Cataractaria a pinch, 

Feeds Jupiter himself, who, when I rest, 

Sleeps on Olympus, sad and supperless. 

As for my potions, he who deeply drinks, 

Gulps with the draught the gift of endless youth.” 


Finally, after inventing the above names unpro- 
nounceable of sauces that do not exist, the boaster 
adds, that his fee is a crown, provided he is not over- 
looked ; but that if there be supervision to check him 
in his perquisites, he is not to be hired under a 
mina : 


‘¢ Si credis, nummos; si non, ne mina quidem!” 


I do not know if cooks more especially used differ- 
ent fingers in mingling their sauces, according as 
they were employed on wedding banquets, martial 
feasts, senatorial entertainments, a/ fresco déjeuners, 
or commercial suppers; but certain it is, that the 
fingers were sacred to diverse-deities. The thumb 
was devoted to Venus, the index finger to Mars, the 
longest finger to Saturn, the next to the Sun, and 
the little finger to Mercury. 

I conclude with a remark that I hope will be grati- 
fying to all culinary artists who respect themselves 
and their calling, and who are anxious to prove that 
their vocation is of ancient and honourable descent. 
Cadmus, who introduced letters into Greece, had 
formerly been cook to the King of Sidon. Thus 
learning ascended to us from the kitchen; and to 


Tz TABLE TRAITS 


the ex-cook of the King of Sidon we perhaps owe 
all the epics that have ever been written. By this 
genealogy, even “ Paradise Lost” may be traced to 
the patties of Cadmus. But cooks in England may 
boast of a xoblesse de cuisine, which dates from the 
Norman Conquest. When William, who wooed his 
wife Matilda by knocking her down, had established 
himself in England, he gave a banquet, at which his 
cook, Tezelin, served a new white soup of such ex- 
quisite flavour, that William sent for the artist, and 
inquired its name. “TI call it Dzllegrout,” said Teze- 
lin, “A scurvy name for so good a soup,” said the 
Conqueror; “but let that pass. We make you Lord 
of the Manor of Addington!” Thus modern cooks 
may boast of a descent from the landed aristocracy 
of the Conquest! Some of their masters cannot do 
as much; and this, perhaps, accounts for the pride 
of the one, and the simplicity of the other. 


The Modern Cook, and His 


Science 


IF it were necessary that the cook of the ancient 
world should be a Sicilian, and that the cuzsinter of 
the ancient régime should be of Languedoc (the 
native place of ‘blanc manger’’), so in these modern 
times he alone is considered a true graduate in the 
noble science de da gueule who is a Gaul by birth, or 
who has gone through his studies in the University 
of French Kitchens. In England, it must be con- 
fessed that great cooks have formed the exception 
rather than the rule; and that our native culinary 
literature, however interesting in certain national 
details, is chiefly based upon a French foundation. 
And yet we may boast of some native professors 
who were illustrious in their way. Master John 
Murrel, for instance, wrote a cookery book in 1630, 
and dedicated it to the daughter of the lord mayor. 
He starts by asserting that cookery books generally 
mar rather than make good meats; and then shows 
what good meats were in his estimation, by teaching 
how to dress “minced bullock’s kidney, a rack of 
veal, a farced leg of mutton, an umble pie, and a 
chewit of stockfish.”’ He is succulently eloquent on 
a compound production, consisting of marrow-bones, 

IT3 


114 TABLE TRAITS 


a leg of mutton, fowls and pullets, and a dozen larks, 
all in one dish. 

The Duke of Newcastle, in the last century, had 
a female cook of some renown, named “Chloe.” 
General Guise, at the siege of Carthagena, saw some 
wild fowl on the wing, and, amid the din of war, he 
thought of “Chloe” and her sauces. She was famous 
for her stewed mushrooms, and there is an anecdote 
connected therewith that will bear repeating. “ Poor 
Doctor Shaw,” writes Horace Walpole, “being sent 
for in great haste to Claremont (it seems the duchess 
had caught a violent cold by a hair of her own whisker 
getting up her nose, and making her sneeze), the 
poor doctor, I say, having eaten a few mushrooms 
before he set out, was taken so ill that he was forced 
to stop at Kingston; and, being carried to the first 
apothecary’s, prescribed a medicine for himself 
which immediately cured him. This catastrophe so 
alarmed the Duke of Newcastle, that he immediately 
ordered all the mushroom-beds to be destroyed ; and 
even the toadstools in the park did not escape scalp- 
ing in this general measure. And a voice of lamen- 
tation was heard at Ramah in Claremont, ‘Chloe’ 
weeping for her mushrooms, and they are not!” 
But let us turn to trace lightly the genealogy of the 
cooks of modern times. 

The descent of the barbarians from the North was © 
the ruin of cooks as well as of kings, of kitchens as 
well as constitutions. Many of the cooks of the 
classic period were slain like the Druid priests at 
the fire of their own altars. A patriotic few fled 
rather than feed the invader; and the servile souls 
who tremblingly offered to prepare a fvicassée of 


THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE 115 


ostrich brains for the Northmen, were dismissed with 
contempt by warrior princes, who lived on under- 
done beef, and very much of it! 

But as sure as the Saxon blood beats out the Nor- 
man, so does good cookery prevail over barbarous 
appetites. The old cooks were a sacred race, whose 
heirs took up the mission of their sires. This mis- 
sion was so far triumphant, that, at the period of 
Charlemagne, the imperial kitchen recognised in its 
chef the representative of the emperor. The Oriental 
pheasant and the peacock, in all the glories of ex- 
panded tail, took the place, or appeared at the side, 
of coarser viands. The dignity and the mirth of: 
Charlemagne’s table were heightened by the presence 
of ladies. Brillat de Savarin states, that since that 
period the presence of the fair sex has ever been a 
law of society. But in this he errs; for the Marquis 
de Bouillé, in his admirable work on the Dukes of 
Guise, affirms that the good civilising custom had 
fallen into disuse, but that a permanent improvement 
was commenced in the reign of Francis I., when 
the Cardinal of Lorraine induced that monarch to 
invite ladies to be present at all entertainments given 
at court. Society followed the fashion of the sover- 
eign; and as it used to be said, “No feast, no 
Levite,” so now it was felt that where there was no 
lady, there was no refined enjoyment. 

At whatever period the emancipation of the ladies 
from their forced seclusion took place, from that 
period the tone of social life was elevated. They 
went about, like Eve, “on hospitable thoughts in- 
tent.” The highest in rank did not disdain to super- 
vise the kitchen ; they displayed their talents in the 


116 TABLE TRAITS 


invention of new dishes, as well as in the preparation 
of the old; and they occasionally well-nigh ruined 
their lords by the magnificence of their tastes, and 
their sublime disregard of expense. All the sump- 
tuary laws of kings to restrain this household ex- 
travagance were joyously evaded, and banquets 
became deadly destructive to men’s estates. 

The French kings granted corporate rights to the 
different trades connected with the kitchen and the 
table; and perhaps the most valued privilege was 
that conceded by Charles IX. to the pastry-cooks, 
who alone were permitted to make bread for the 
service of the mass. 

Montaigne, in his pleasant way, recounts a con- 
versation he had with an Italian chef who had served 
in the kitchen of Cardinal Caraffa, up to the period 
of the death of his gastronomic Eminence. “I made 
him,” says the great essayist, “tell me something 
about his post.. He gave me a lecture on the sci- 
ence of eating, with a gravity and magisterial coun- 
tenance as if he had been determining some vexed 
question in theology. He deciphered to me, as it 
were, the distinction that exists between appetites, 
—the appetite at fasting; that which people have 
at the end of the second or third service; the means 
of awaking and exciting it; the general ‘police,’ so 
to speak, of his sauces; and then particularised their 
ingredients and effects. The differences of salads, 
according to the seasons, he next discoursed upon. 
He explained what sorts ought to be prepared warm, 
and those which should always be served cold; the 
way of adorning and embellishing them, in order to 
render them seductive to the eye. After this he 


.  /-— ae 


THE MODERN.COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE 117 


entered on the order of table-services, —a subject 
full of fine and important considerations; and all 
this was puffed up with rich and magnificent terms ; 
phrases, indeed, such as are employed by statesmen 
and diplomatists, when they are discoursing on the 
government of an empire.” We see by this what 
the “art de la gueule’’ was in the days of Charles 
IX., whose mother, Catherine de Medicis, had intro- 
duced it into France as a science whereby men 
should enjoy life. The same lady introduced also 
poisoning, as a science whereby men might be de- 
prived of life. Her own career was full of opposing 
facts like these, — facts which caused a poetic cook 
to write the epitaph upon her, which says: 


“Here lieth a queen, who was angel and devil, 
Admirer of good, and a doer of evil; 
She supported the state, and the state she destroyed ; 
She reconciled friends, and she friendships alloyed ; 
She brought forth three kings, thrice endanger’d the crown, 
Built palaces up, and threw whole cities down; 
Made many good laws, many bad ones as well, 
And merited richly both heaven and hell.” 


The mention of Cardinal de Caraffa, by Montaigne, 
reminds me that, for a gastronome, the cardinal was 
singularly sanguinary in spirit. JI know no one to 
compare with him, except Doctor Cahill, who is not 
averse to good living, and who has earned so gloomy 
a notoriety by his terrible sentiment of the massacre 
of Protestants being “a glorious idea.” Caraffa was 
enabled to enjoy both his propensities, of swallowing 
good things and slaughtering heretics. ‘Having 

obtained leave from the Pope to establish the Inqui- 


118 TABLE TRAI$S 


sition at Rome, at a time when the resources of the 
state ran. low, he turned his private property to the 
use of his zeal, and set up a small Inquisition at his 
own expense.” Thus he could dine within hearing 
of the groans of his victims; his cook could inform 
him that the hares and heretics had both been 
roasted ; and he may have been occasionally puzzled 
to know whether that smell of burning came from 
the patties or the Protestants. 

The Italian cooks were, for a season, fashionable 
in France; but they had a passion for poetry as well 
as for pies, and were given to let their sauces burn 
while they recited whole pages of ‘ Orlando Furioso.” 
They were critics as well as cooks, and the kitchens 
resounded with their denunciations of all who objected 
to the merits of the divine Ariosto. But even the 
papal ennobling of a cook could not compensate for 
an indifferent dinner; and though Leo X., in a fit of 
modest delight at a sauce made by his cook during 
Lent, named him from that circumstance “Jack o’ 
- Lent,” or “Jean de Caréme,” the French would not 
allow that such an event authorised the artzste to be 
dreaming over epics, when he should be wide-awake 
to the working of his proper mystery. But the mys- 
tery itself was much obstructed by the political events 
of the times. There were the bloody wars of the 
Guises, the troubles of the League, the despotic reign 
of Richelieu, the cacochymical temperament (as the 
editor of the Almanach des Gourmands would call it) 
of Louis XIII., and the ridiculous war of the Fronde. 
The glory of the French kitchen rose with that of 
the Grand Monarque, and Vatel and Louis XIV. 
were contemporaries. Vatel slew himself to save his 


THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE _ 119 


honour! The king had come to dine with Condé; 
but the cod had not arrived in time to be dressed for 
the king, and thereupon the heroic artist fell upon his 
sword, like an ancient Roman, and is immortalised for 
ever by his glorious folly! 

But there was nothing really heroic in the death of 
Vatel, whose sword was pointed at his breast by 
wounded vanity. Far more heroic was the death 
of the cook of the Austrian consul, in the late cruel 
massacre, by the cowardly Russian fleet, at Sinope. 
The consul’s cook was a young woman of thirty 
years of age. The Muscovite murderers were at the 
very height of their bloody enjoyment, and sending 
shots into the town, when the cook attempted to 
cross a garden, to procure some herbs; for consuls 
must dine, though half the world be dying. She 
had performed her mission, and was returning, when 
a thirty-six pounder shot cut her completely in two. 
Rather than give up the parsley for her master’s 
soup, she thus encountered death. What was Vatel 
and his bodkin, to this more modern cook and the 
thirty-six pounder, loaded by the Tsar for her destruc- 
tion ? 

The cooks “looked up” in the nights and suppers 
of the regency, and the days and dinners of Louis 
XV. It would be difficult to say whether under the 
regent, or under the king, the culinary art and its 
professors most flourished. I am inclined, however, 
to think, that, during the tranquil and voluptuous 
period of the reign of Louis XV., the cooks of France 
rose to that importance from which they have never 
descended. They became a recognised and esteemed 
class in society, whose spoiled children they were ; 


120 TABLE TRAITS 


and, in return, it was very like spoiled children that 
they behaved. But how could it be otherwise, when 
the noble, the brave, and the fair girded aprons to 
their loins, and stood over stew-pans, with the air 
of alchemists over alembics? It is to the nobility 
and other distinguished persons in high life, yet 
not noble, in France, that gastronomy owes many 
a dish, whose very name betrays to ecstasy. And 
here are a few of these droll benefactors of man- 
kind. 

The Marquis de Béchamel immortalised his name, 
in the reign of Louis XIV., by his invention of cream- 
sauce, for turbot and cod. Madame de Maintenon 
imagined the “cutlets in curl-papers”’ which go by 
her name, and which her ingenuity created in order 
to guard the sacred stomach of the Grand Monarque 
from the grease which he could not digest. The 
“ Chartreuse a@ la Mauconseil”’ is the work, and the 
most innocent one, of the free and easy marchioness 
of that name. A woman more free and easy still, the 
Duchess of Villeroy (Maréchale de Luxembourg), 
produced, in her hours of reflection, the dish known 
as the poulets a la Villeroy. They were eaten with. 
bread @ la Régent, of which the author was the voué 
Duke of Orléans. His too “well-beloved”’ daughter, 
the Duchess of Berry, had a gastronomic turn of 
mind, like her illustrious father. She was an epicu- 
rean lady, who tasted of all the pleasures of life with- 
out moderation, whose device was, “Short and 
sweet,” and who was contented to die young, seeing 
that she had exhausted all enjoyment, and had 
achieved a renown, that should embalm her name for 
ever, as the inventor of the j/ets de lapereau. The 


THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE 121 


gigot a la Mailly was the result of much study, on 
the part of the first mistress of Louis XV., to rid 
herself of a sister who was a rival. Madame de 
Pompadour, another of the same king’s “ladies,” 
testified her gratitude for the present which the 
monarch made her of the Chateau de Bellevue, by 
the production of the filets de volatlle a la Bellevue. 
The queen of Louis was more devout, but not less 
epicurean, than his mistresses ; and the petztes bouchées 
a la Reine, if they were not of her creating, were 
named in honour of Maria Leczinska. Louis himself 
had a contempt for female cooks; but Madame du 
Barry had one so well-trained, that with a charming 
dinner of coulis de faisans, croustades de la foie de 
lottes, salmis de bécassine, pain de volaille a la 
supréme, poularde au cresson, écrevisses au vin de 
Sauterne, bisquets de péches au Noyau, and créme 
de cerneaux, the king was so overcome with ecstasy, 
that, after recovering from the temporary disgust he 
experienced at hearing that it was the handiwork of a 
woman, he consented to ennoble her by conferring 
upon her the cordon bleu, — which phrase, from that 
time, has been accepted as signifying a skilled female 
cook. 

With respect to other dishes and their authors, 
the vol au vent a la Nesle owns a marquis for its 
father; and the poularde a la Montmorency is the off- 
spring of a duke. The Bayonnotse, or the Mabonnotse 
rather, recalls one of the victories of the Duke de 
Richelieu ; and veau a la Montgolfier, well inflated, was 
the tribute of a culinary artist to the hero who first 
rode the air at the tail of a balloon. The sorbet a la 
Donizetti was the masterpiece of the Italian confec- 


122 TABLE TRAITS 


tioner of the late Duke of Beaufort. He had been 
to the opera; and one of the composer’s charming 
airs having given him an idea, he brooded over it, till, 
an hour or so before dawn, it was hatched into reality, 
when he rushed to the duke’s bedchamber, and, 
‘‘drawing Priam’s bed-curtains in the night,” an- 
nounced to his startled Grace the achievement of a 
new sorbet. 

The ¢endrons d’agneaux au soleil, and the filets de 
poulets a la Pompadour, were two of the dishes in- 
vented by the famous lady of that name. The cavbon- 
nade ala Soubise and the carré de veau a la Guemenée, 
date, the first from the reign of Louis XV., the last 
from that of Louis X VI., — periods when the people 
were famishing. The Pompadour was a great patron 
of the arts, and especially of the culinary art; and 
the cuzsine des petits appartements, during her reign, 
was at the very height of its savoury reputation. 
The Prince of Soubise was a poor general, but a rich 
glutton; and his son-in-law, the Prince de Guemenée, 
was famous for his invention of various vagodts, his 
inordinate extravagance, and his bankruptcy, with 
liabilities against him amounting to twenty-eight 
millions of francs. Madame la Maréchale de Mire- 
poix was the authoress of cazlles a la Mirepoix ; and 
her descendants live on the reputation acquired 
thereby by their epicurean ancestress. The Bour- 
bons vied with the aristocracy in taxing their genius, 
and cudgelling their brains, in order to produce new 
dishes. Thus, the potage ad la Xavier was the produc- 
tion of Louis XVIII., in the days of his early man- 
hood; while the soupe a la Conde was a rival dish 
invented by his princely cousin, —a cousin, by the 


THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE 123 


way, who, when a refugee in England, used to pass 
his evenings at Astley’s, with his pockets full of 
apples, which he gallantly presented to ladies as 
highly, but not as naturally, coloured as the fruit. 
Perhaps the reputation of the Maréchal de Richelieu 
rests more on his doudins a la carpe, than on his 
battles and Jdzllets-doux. Finally, a mysterious ob- 
scurity conceals from us the name of the inventor 
of the petztes bouchées de fore gras. He is the 
Junius of gastronomic literature; but if he be guessed 
at in vain, he is blessed abundantly, as one who has 
concentrated paradise (an epicurean’s paradise), and 
given an antepast thereof, in a single mouthful. 

The Prince de Soubise was famous in the reign of 
Louis XV. for giving great dinners, and paying no- 
body but his cooks and the young ladies of the 
opera. He once varied his extravagance by a splen- 
did féte, which was to terminate by a supper. His 
chef waited on him with the bill of fare for the ban- 
quet, and the first article which attracted his atten- 
tion was “fifty hams.” ‘Half a hundred hams!” 
said the prince, “that’s a coarse idea, Bertrand. You 
have not got to feed my regiment of cavalry.” “Truly, 
prince! and only one ham will appear on the table ; 
I want the remaining forty-nine for adjuncts, sea- 
sonings, flavourings, and a dozen other purposes.” 
“Bertrand,” replied the prince, “you are robbing 
me, and I cannot allow this article to pass.” “ Mon- 
seigneur!” exclaimed the offended artiste, “you 
doubt my morals, and libel my merit. You do not 
know what a treasure you possess in me; you have 
only to order it, and those fifty hams which so ter- 
ribly offend you, why, I will put them all into a phial 


124 TABLE TRAITS 


not bigger than my thumb!”’ The prince smiled, 
and Bertrand triumphed. 

The cooks of the young King Louis XVI. re- 
marked, with mingled terror and disgust, that his 
appetite was rather voracious than delicate. He 
cared little what he ate, provided there was enough 
of it; and he looked to nutrition rather than nice- 
ness. A succulent joint with him had more merit 
than the most singular of dishes, the invention of 
which had perhaps caused three nights of wakeful- 
ness to its author. But the aristocracy, the law, and 
finance, maintained tables which ought to have been 
the pride of Versailles. Late dinners, or gorgeous 
suppers, were indulged in to such a degree by the 
moneyed classes, that it was familiarly said, that of 
an evening the chimneys of the Faubourg St. Ho- 
nore made fragrant with their incense the entire capi- 
tal. It was reckoned that, at this period, twenty 
thousand men had no other profession than that of 
“diner out,” which they carried on, like the parasites 
of old, by retailing anecdotes and news in return for 
the repast. It was a time when “Monseigneur ” 
thought nothing of despatching his cook to London 
to procure a turtle; which, after all, was less extrav- 
agant than the process of Cambacérés, who had his 
Périgord pies sent to him through the post, “on 
his Majesty’s service.” The Languedocien cooks in 
France were paid the quadruple of the salary of the 
family tutor, good eating being so much more essen- 
tial to life than mere instruction ; and besides, could 
the family tutor have accomplished anything that 
could equal the achievement of the family cook who 
could bring to table entire a “sanglier a la crapau- 


THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE 125 


dine?’ The cooks of the age of Louis XVI. in- 
vented the “ douz/lze” and the “consommé,”’ because 
mastication was considered by them a vulgar process ; 
and the royal cooks, during Passion Week, manip- 
ulated the vegetables placed before the king into the 
forms of ocean-dwelling fish, and gave to the sem- 
blance the taste of the reality for which it passed to 
the eye. 

The glory of gastronomy was again rising when it 
was suddenly quenched by the revolutionary torrent, 
and the nation was put on a three years’ meagre 
dietary by the Jacobins and the Directory. But the 
revolution, which affected to hate cooks as aristo- 
cratic appendages that ought to be suppressed, some- 
times made, where it hoped to mar. The case of Ude 
is one in point. 

Monsieur Ude, like Prince Eugene, was originally 
intended for the Church. At the breaking out of 
the French Revolution, he was residing, for instruc- 
tion, with an abbé, and master and pupil had to fly 
before the popular indignation which, for a time, 
assailed the -Church, and all therewith connected. 
Ude’s life was in peril in the public streets, and he 
just saved it, by rushing into the shop of a pastry- 
cook, where he found a permanent asylum. The 
“house of Ude,” like other great houses, nearly 
perished in the great political shipwreck of the day, 
and this particular scion thereof took to the study of 
practical gastronomy, and became chief supreme in 
various great kitchens, from that of royalty down to 
that of Crockford. 

When the sluices of the French Revolution were 
opened, how diverse were the fortunes of those who 


126 TABLE TRAITS 


fled from before it! It was the same with the gentle- 
men who had followed the fortunes of Napoleon. 
They were scattered, like the generals of Alexander, 
without being able, like them, to retire upon inde- 
pendent sovereignties, and rear dynasties of barbaric 
splendour. Some went to Greece to crush despotism, 
some went to Lahore ‘to aid it. A few, like Latour 
d’Auvergne, took to the Church; but, saving that 
portly person himself, none had the good luck to 
reach the archiepiscopate. Those who failed to pro- 
cure employment in foreign armies, and yet could 
not lay aside their propensity for killing, went to the 
East, and prescribed as physicians. Such of the rest 
as were absolutely fit for nothing, and willing to do 
it, inundated England, and undertook the light and 
irresponsible office of private tutors! 

But it was the earlier Revolution that afforded 
examples of the greatest contrasts. Many young 
men, intended for the Church, changed their profes- 
sion, and became popular, useful, and rich, in the 
households of European royalty, as civilisers of the 
kitchen, who raised cookery from its barbarous con- 
dition to a matter of science and taste. Perhaps 
the most curious of the waifs and strays of the Revo- 
lution flung upon our shores, was the Chevalier 
d’Aubigné, who contrived to live, as so many French 
gentlemen of that time did, in bitter poverty, without 
a sacrifice of dignity. He had one day been invited 
by an English friend to dine with the latter at a tav- 
ern. In the course of the repast, he took upon him- 
self to mix the salad; and the way in which he did 
this, attracted the notice of all the other guests in 
the room. Previous to the period of which I am 


THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE 127 


speaking, lettuces were commonly eaten, by tavern 
frequenters at least, aw naturel, with no more dress- 
ing than Nebuchadnezzar had to his grass when he 
dieted daily among the beasts. Consequently, when 
D’ Aubigné handled the preparation for which he had 
asked, like a chemist concocting elixir in his labora- 
tory, the guests were lost in admiration; for the 
refreshing aroma of a mayonnaise was warrant to 
their senses, that the French knight had discovered 
for them a new pleasure. One of them approached 
. the foreign magician, and said, “Sir, it is universally 
known that your nation excels all others in the making 
a salad. Would it be too great a liberty to ask you 
to do us the favour to mix one for the party at my 
table?” The courteous Frenchman smiled, was 
flattered, performed the office asked of him, and put 
four gentlemen in a state of uncontrollable ecstasy. 
He had talked cheerfully, as he mixed gracefully and 
scientifically, and, in the few minutes required by 
him to complete his work of enchantment, he con- 
trived to explain his position as emigrant, and his 
dependence on the pecuniary aid afforded by the 
English government. The guests did not let the poor 
chevalier depart without slipping into his hand a 
golden fee, which he received with as little embarrass- 
ment, and as much dignity, as though he had been 
the physician De Portal taking an honorarium from 
the hands of the Cardinal de Rohan. 

He had communicated his address, and he, per- 
haps, was not very much surprised when, a few days 
after, he received a letter in which he was politely 
requested to repair to a house in Grosvenor Square, 
for the purpose of mixing a salad for a dinner-party 


128 TABLE TRAITS 


there to be given. D’Aubigné obeyed the summons, 
and, after performing his mission, returned home 
richer by a five-pound note than when he went out. 

Henceforth he became the recognised “ fashionable 
salad-maker ;’’ and ladies “died” for his salads, as 
they do now for Constantine’s simulative bouquets. 
The preparer was soon enabled to proceed to his 
responsible duties in a carriage; and a servant at- 
tended him, carrying a mahogany case, containing 
the necessary ingredients for concocting various 
salads, according to the respective tastes of his em- 
ployers. At a later period, he sold, by hundreds, 
similar mahogany cases, which he had caused to be 
made, and which were furnished with all matters 
necessary for the making an irreproachable salad, 
and with directions how to administer them. The 
chevalier, too, was, like old Carré, — whose will was 
so cleverly made by the very disinterested friends 
who had never before spoken to him, —a prudent 
and a saving man; and by the period which reopened 
France to the émigrés, he had realised some eighty 
thousand francs, upon which he enjoyed a dignified 
retirement in a provincial town. He invested sixty 
thousand francs in the funds; with the other twenty 
thousand he purchased a little estate in the Limousin, 
and, if he lacked a “legend” to his device, I would 
have helped him to one in “ Sad adfert.” 

A knight over a salad-bow] is not a chivalrous pic- 
ture; but the stern necessity of the case gave it dig- 
nity, and the resulting profits quieted the scruples of 
the gentleman. When Booth pounced upon Captain 
Bath, sitting in a dirty flannel gown, and warming his 
sister's posset at the fire, the noble and gaunt captain 


THE MODERN COOK, AND HIS SCIENCE 129 


was taken something aback, and said, in a little con- 
fusion, “I did not expect, sir, to be seen by you in 
this situation.” Booth told him “he thought it im- 
possible he could appear in a situation more becoming 
his character.”” The compliment was equivocal; but 
the captain said, “ Youdonot? By G I am very 
much obliged to you for that opinion; but I believe, 
sir, however my weakness may prevail on me to 
descend from it, no man can be more conscious of 
his own dignity than myself.” The apology of good 
Captain Bath in Fielding’s “Amelia,” would have 
served the chevalier who made salads, had he needed 
one. 

If a salad made the fortune of a chevalier, it on 
one occasion made that of a female cook, with whose 
dexterity in this respect a learned English judge was 
so enchanted, that he raised the lucky maiden to the 
quality of wife. If we discuss the traits of life at 
table, we have nothing to do with the secrets of 
household ; but an incident illustrative of the conse- 
quences of this match may be mentioned. The 
judge ever after was famous for protracting the sit- 
tings in court beyond all precedent and patience; and 
when weary barristers were aghast at hearing a new 
cause called on, when the night was half spent, and 
fairly remonstrated against the judicial cruelty, the 
learned husband of his cook would remark with a 
sigh, “Gentlemen, we must be somewhere; we can- 
not be better anywhere than where we now are,” — 
the half of which assertion was stoutly denied by his 
hearers. 

Our aristocracy are not quite so famous for their 
invention of dishes as that of France; but their 





130 TABLE TRAITS 


love for good dinners, and their knowledge of what 
they ought to be, are not inferior to the affection and 
science of our neighbours. When Lord Marcus Hill 
officiated as whipper-in to the Whig government, it 
was part of his office to order the fish dinner at which 
ministers regale themselves when sessional cares no 
longer molest them. The fish dinners of Lord 
Marcus are remembered with satisfaction and grati- 
tude, for they were first-rate in their way. The rep- 
utation of the Carlton cuzszve and cellar is said to be 
chiefly owing to Sir Alexander Grant, of whom a 
gastronomic critic says, “No living Amphitryon has 
given better dinners in his time; and few can boast 
of having entertained more distinguished guests.” 
His name, as a patron, reminds me of that of Careme, 
as a practitioner,” 


Be and Ink Sketch of Caréme 


Ir would be as easy to compile a dictionary of 
cooks, as of musicians or painters; but it would not 
be so amusing or so edifying, except perhaps to those 
who think more of their stomach than of their mind. 
But it would then be attractive and useful to the 
majority of readers ; for the sages themselves are not 
unmindful of their stomachs, and, according toa sage, 
they would be unworthy of the name if they neglected 
that vital matter. Johnson, you know, lived in an 
age when things were called by their real names. 
“J appelle un chat un chat,’ was the device of the 
plain-spoken, when not only men, but ladies, bold 
a§ the Thalestris of Young’s pungent satire, loudly 
dared to name what nature dared to give. Doctor 
Johnson, then, says: “ Some people have a foolish way 
of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they 
eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously ; 
for I look upon it that he who does not mind his 
belly, will hardly mind anything else!” 

To the world, then, even a biographical dictionary 
of cooks might be captivating; but as my present 
mission is not to write an encyclopedia, but rather 
deferentially to offer my little sketches to gentle, and 
not too critical, readers, with leisure half-hours at 

131 


132 TABLE TRAITS 


their command, so do I offer them a sketch of Caréme, 
as the knowledge of the individual may stand for that 
of the class. 

He was illustrious by descent ; for one of his an- 
cestors had served in the household of a Pope, who 
himself made more sauces than saints, Leo X. But 
Caréme was one of so poor and so numerous a family, 
that when he came into the world, he was no more 
welcome than Oliver Goldsmith was; the respective 
parents of the little-cared-for babes did not know 
what future great men lay in naked helplessness be- 
fore them. One wrote immortal poetry and starved: 
the other made delicious pastry, and rode in a chariot! 
We know how much Oliver received for his ** Vicar ;” 
while Anthony Caréme used to receive twice as much 
for merely writing out a recipe to make a “até.” 
Nay, Caréme’s untouched patties, when they left 
royal tables, were bought up at a cost which would 
have supported Goldsmith for a month; and a cold 
sugared eztremet, at the making of which Caréme 
had presided, readily fetched a higher price than the 
public now pay for the “Complete Works” of the 
poet of Green Arbour Court! 

Caréme studied under various great masters, but 
he perfected his studies under Boucher, chef des ser 
vices of the Prince Talleyrand. The glory of Careme 
was coeval with that of Napoleon: those two indi- 
viduals were great men at the same period; but the 
glory of one will, perhaps, be a little more enduring 
than that of the other. I will not say whose glory 
will thus last the longer; for as was remarked cour- 
teously by the Oxford candidate for honours, who 
was more courteous than ‘crammed,’ and who was 


PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME 133 


asked which were the minor prophets, “I am not 
willing to draw invidious distinctions!” 

In the days of the Empire, —the era of the great- 
ness, of the achievements, and of the reflections of 
Caréme, — the possession of him was as eagerly con- 
tested by the rich as that of a nymph by the satyrs. 
He was alternately the glory of Talleyrand, the boast 
of Lavalette, and the pride of the Saxon ambassador. 
In their houses, too, his hand was as often on his pen 
as on the handle of his casserole; and inspiration 
never visited his brain without the call being duly 
registered in his note-book, with reflections thereon 
highly philosophical and gastronomic. 

But Caréme was capricious. It was not that he 
was unfaithful, but he was volage; and he passed 
from kitchen to kitchen, as the bee wings from 
flower to flower. The Emperor Alexander dined 
with Talleyrand, and forthwith he seduced Caréme: 
the seduction money was only 4100 sterling per 
month, and the culinary expenses. Caréme did not 
yield without much coyness. He urged his love for 
study, his desire to refine the race of which he made 
himself the model, his love for his country; and he 
even accompanied, for a brief moment, “Lord 
Stewart ’’ to Vienna; but it was more in the way 
of policy than pastry: for Count Orloff was sent 
after him on a mission, and Caréme, after flying, with 
the full intention of being followed, to London and 
Paris, yielded to the golden solicitation, and did the 
Emperor Alexander the honour of becoming the 
head of the imperial kitchen in whatever palace his 
Majesty presided. But the delicate susceptibility of 
Caréme was wounded by discovering that his book 


134 TABLE TRAITS 


of expenses was subjected to supervision. He flung 
up his appointment in disgust, and hastened across 
Europe to England. The jealous winds wished to 
detain him for France, and they blew him back 
on the coast between Calais and Boulogne, exactly 
as they did another gentleman, who may not be so 
widely known as Careme, but who has been heard 
of in England under the name of William Words- 
worth. Caréme accepted the omen, repaired to 
Paris, entered the service of the Princess Bagration, 
and served the table of that capricious lady, ez 
maitre ahotel. As the guests uttered ecstatic 
praises of the fare, the princess would smile upon 
him as he stood before her, and exclaim, “He is 
the pearl of cooks!”’ Is it a matter of surprise that 
he was vain? Fancy being called a “pearl” by a 
princess! On reading it we think of the days when 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu put nasty footmen 
into eclogues, and deified the dirty passions of Mrs. 
Mahony’s lackey. 

The princess, however, ate herself into a _per- 
manent indigestion, and Careme transferred his 
services to the English ambassador at the court 
of Vienna. There, every morning, seated in his 
magnificent kitchen, Careme received the visit of 
« Milor Stewart,” who seldom left him without pres- 
ents and encouragements. Indeed, these rained upon 
the immortal artist. The Emperor Alexander had 
consented to have Caréme’s projects in culinary 
architecture dedicated to him, and, with notice of 
consent, sent him a diamond ring. When Prince 
Walkouski placed it on his finger, the cook forgot 
his dignity, and burst into tears. So did all the 


PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME 135 


other cooks in the Austrian capital, — out of sheer 
jealousy. 

Careme, two years before George IV. was king, 
had been for a short period a member of the regent’s 
household. He left Vienna to be present at the 
coronation ; but he arrived too late; and he does not 
scruple to say, very ungenerously, that the banquet 
was spoiled for want of his presence, nor to insinuate 
‘that the colleagues with whom he would have been 
associated were unworthy of such association, — an 
insinuation at once base and baseless. After being 
the object of a species of semi-worship, and yielding 
to every new offer, yet affecting to despise them all, 
Caréme ultimately tabernacled with Baron Roths- 
child in Paris; and the superhuman excellency of 
his dinners, is it not written in the “Book without 
a Name” of Lady Morgan? And was not his 
residence there the object of envy, and cause of 
much melancholy, and opportunity for much eulogy, 
on the part of George IV.? Well, Anthony Caréme 
would have us believe as much with respect to him- 
self and the king; but we do not believe a word of 
it; for the royal table was never better cared for by 
the royal officers, whose duty lay in such care, than 
at this very period. George IV. is said to have 
tempted him by offering triple salaries; but all in 
vain; for London was too ¢rzste an abiding-place 
for a man whose whole soul, out of kitchen hours, 
was given to study. And so Careme remained with 
his Jewish patron until infirmity overtook his noble 
nature, and he retired to dictate his immortal works 
(like Milton, very!) to his accomplished daughter. 
Les beaux restes of Careme were eagerly sought 


136 TABLE TRAITS 


after; but he would not heed what was no longer a 
temptation; for he was realising twenty thousand 
francs a year from the booksellers, besides the in- 
‘terest of the money he had saved. Think of it, 
shade of Milton! Eight hundred pounds sterling 
yearly, for writing on kitchen stuff! Who would 
compose epics after that? But Caréme’s books were 
epics after their sort, and they are highly creditable 
to the scribe who wrote them from his notes. Fi- 
nally, even Anthony Caréme died, like cooks of less 
degree; but he had been the imperial despot of 
European kitchens, had been “beringed” by mon- 
archs, and been smiled on by princesses; he had 
received lords in his kitchen, and had encountered 
ladies who gave him a great deal for a very little 
knowledge in return; and finally, as Fulke Greville 
had inscribed on his tomb that he had been the 
friend of Sir Philip Sidney, so the crowning joy of 
Caréme’s life might have been chiselled on his monu- 
ment, indicating that he had been the friend of one 
whom he would have accounted a greater man than 
the knightly hero in question, — namely, 22 Maestro 
Rossini! Caréme’s cup was thereat full; and he 
died, perfectly convinced that paradise itself would 
be glad at his coming. 

The celebrated Damvers was chef to the as cele- 
brated financier Grimaud de la Reyniére, in the last 
century. Grimaud died a martyr to his epicurean 
tastes. He was dining on a paté de fotes gras, when 
he allowed his appetite to overpower his digestion, 
and he died of the excess. Barthe, the author of 
“Les Fausses Infidélités,” also fell on the field of the 
dining-room. He was extremely short-sighted, and 


PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME 137 


ate of everything on the table. He did not consult 
his appetite, but his servant, asking him, “Have I 
Gaseneor that? “Have I had any of this?” It 
was after partaking too freely, both of “this” and 
“that,” that poor M. Barthe let his temper get the 
better of him in an argument, and a stroke of apo- 
plexy sent him under the table. His cook deplored 
in him the loss of a man of taste. 

The cook of the Count de Tessé, master of the 
horse to Marie Antoinette, was famous for dressing 
artichokes. The great Morillian surpassed him, 
however; but this feat did not save the artist from 
ending his days in poverty. The elder Robert was, 
perhaps,’ equal to either of them, in this or in any 
other respect connected with his art. The great 
Caréme, ignorant of everything else, was at least an 
accomplished cook. There is, as I have said, a tra- 
dition that his petzts pdtés, when they left the regent’s 
table, were sold, like the second-hand pies from the 
royal table at Versailles, for fabulous prices. As I 
have before intimated, it was for Leo X. that Caréme 
the First invented those succulent, but orthodox, 
dishes, which pleased the pontifical palate at a season 
when gratification by gravy would have been scan- 
dalous! It was in the Baron Rothschild’s household 
that Careme the Second invented his famous sauce 
piquante, the result of his studies under Richaut, 
Asne, and the elder Robert. It was in and for 
France that Caréme published the learned and 
curious work of which he is the reputed author, and 
which he may have dictated, but which he could not 
have written. It is marked by philosophical inquiry, 
instruction, and pleasant trifling; and neither book 


138 - TABLE TRAITS 


nor reputed author has been excelled by any artist, 
or any sample of kitchen literature, that has appeared 
since that period. 

Before the age of Careme, the popular kitchen in ° 
France was not very superior to our own; and the 
patrons of tavernes and traiteurs were as coarsely fed 
as our frequenters of ordinaries. But as royalty fell, 
the vestaurateurs rose; and when, in 1786, the cooks 
of Louis XVI. began to augur badly of their pros- 
pects, three provincial brothers, Barthelemy, Manni- 
elles, and Simon, opened their famous restaurant, 
“Les Trois Fréres Provengaux,” in the Palais Royal, 
and constituted themselves the cooks of another king, 
—the sovereign people. The new establishment 
created an era in the history of cookery, and men of 
all shades of politics, and generals of all grades of 
reputation, resorted to the tables of the brothers. 
General Bonaparte and Barras were to be seen there 
daily, before they took their cheap pleasure at the 
theatre of Mlle. Montansier. During the wars of 
the Empire it was the chosen stage for the farewell 
banquets of brethren in arms, and at this period the 
receipts amounted to not less than £500 sterling 
daily. The triumvirate of proprietors endured longer 
than any such union in the political world; and it 
was not till the reign of Louis Philippe that the 
establishment of ‘Les Trois Fréres”’ descended, 
under a new proprietary, into a more unpretending 
position than that which it had proudly sustained 
during half a century. The casseroles of the savoury 
brothers had remained unshaken, while kings and 
constitutions had fallen around them. 

The fortune of the provincial brothers tempted 


PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME 139 


another country cook from his obscurity ; and some 
four years after the former had set up their tables 
in the Palais Royal, the immortal Véry thrust his 
feet into wooden clogs, and trudged from a village 
on the Meuse up to the capital, to give it a taste of 
his quality. He enchanted Marshal Duroc with some 
of his plats, and henceforth his fortune was secure. 
He married a beautiful woman, whose pen kept his 
books, whose face attracted customers, and whose 
heart was devoted to her husband. A quarter of a 
century sufficed to enable Véry to die immensely 
rich, after working excessively hard, and to be mag- 
nificently entombed in the Cimetiere Montmartre, 
under a marble column, which bore the engraved 
assurance that “his whole life was devoted to the 
useful arts.” 

Beauvilliers appeared in Paris about the same time 
as “The Three Brothers ;”’ he made and unmade his 
fortune three or four times, and died poor, three 
years after Véry died so rich. Beauvilliers was the 
author of: “L’Art du Cuisinier,” a book almost as 
interesting as “The Art of Dining ;’’ and one cannot 
name either without standing mentally chapeau bas 
before the author. 

Beauvilliers was famous for his splendid wines and 
heavy bill. The “ Veau Qui Tette”’ was renowned for 
its sheep-trotters. The reputation of others was built 
upon kidneys; that of Véry, on his entrées truffées. 
The “Three Provincial Brothers” enjoyed a wide 
esteem for the way in which they dressed cod with 
garlic. Baleine kept a house that was crowded by 
the admirers of fish; while that of Robert was dis- 
tinguished for the graceful attention with which pre- 


140 TABLE TRAITS 


viously ordered dinners were served; and that of 
Henneveu for the splendid boudoirs in which shy 
couples, too modest to encounter the public gaze, 
could dine in private, and cease to find their modesty 
oppressive. Beauvilliers’s, as I have intimated, was 
a costly house; but it was not therefore the most 
excellent in Paris. The excellence of a dinner is not 
to be determined by its price. Four years ago an 
illustrious party dined at Philippe’s, in the Rue Mont- 
orgueil, at a far lower cost, and after a far more 
exquisite fashion, than if they had joined the epi- 
cureans of the Clarendon, at 45 per head. The 
party consisted of Lords Brougham and Dufferin, 
the Honourable W. Stuart, two other “ Britishers,” 
and Count D’Orsay and M. Alexandre Dumas. The 
dinner on this occasion was a vrecherché affair. It 
had been as anxiously meditated upon as an epic 
poem; and it was a far pleasanter thing. “The 
most successful dishes,” says the author of “The 
Art of Dining,” “were the Jdzsgues, the fretures a 
l’Italienne, and the gigot a la Bretanne. Out of 
compliment to the world-wide fame of Lord 
Brougham and Alexandre Dumas, M. Philippe pro- 
duced some Clos de Vougeot, which (like his name- 
sake in ‘High Life Below Stairs’), he vowed, should 
never go down the throat of a man whom he did not 
esteem and admire; and it was voted first-rate by 
acclamation.” 

The French repasts are not always good, even 
when they are rather costly. In 1807, a party of 
twenty-two sat down to a repast at the younger 
Robert’s, in Paris. The Amphitryon of the feast 
was M. Daolouis; and the bill, exclusive of wine, 


PEN AND INK SKETCH OF CAREME 141 


amounted to thirty louis. There were but three or 
four great dishes, and two or three sauces. The dis- 
content of the guests was general, and the giver of 
the feast allowed that the dinner was not near so 
good as that of the “Société des Mercredis,”’ at Le 
Gacque’s, which cost only seven francs per head, 
ordinary wine, liqueurs, and coffee included. “ Mais, 
a diner, messieurs, a diner!” 


= 


Dinner Traits 


“For these and all His mercies,” once began 
Doctor Johnson, whose good custom it was always 
to thank Heaven for the good things set before him; 
but he almost as invariably found fault with the 
food given. And of this seesaw process Mrs. John- 
son grew tired; and on the occasion alluded to, she 
stopped her husband by remarking that it was a 
farce to pretend to be grateful for dishes which, 
in two minutes, he would pronounce to be as worth- 
less as the worst of Jeremiah’s figs! And so there 
was no blessing. Mrs. Johnson might have supplied 
the one employed by merry old Lady Hobart at a 
dinner where she looked inquiringly, but vainly, for 
a grace-sayer. ‘ Well,’ remarked the good ancient 
dame, “I think I must say as one did in the like 
case, ‘God be thanked! nobody will say grace!’” 
It is seldom that “grace” is properly said or sung. 
The last is a terribly melodious mockery at public 
dinners ; but then every man should silently and fer- 
vently make thanksgiving in his own heart. He is 
an ungracious knave who sits down to a meal without 
at least a silent acknowledgment of gratitude to Him, 
without whom there could have been no spreading of 
the banquet. Such a defaulter deserves to be the 
bound slave of dyspepsia, until he learn better man- 

142 


DINNER TRAITS 143 


ners. ‘Come, gentlemen,” Beau Nash used to say, 
“eat, and welcome!” It was all his grace; and had 
he said, “Come, gentlemen, be thankful and eat,” 
it would have been more like the Christian gentle- 
man, and less like the “ beau.” 

It was a good old rule that prescribed as a law of 
numbers at the dinner-table, that the company should 
not be more than the Muses nor less than the Graces. 
There was not always unlimited freedom of action in 
the matter; for, by the Ler Faunza, a man was for- 
bidden to invite more than three strangers (not of 
his family) to dinner, except on market days (three 
times a month), when he might invite five. The 
host was restricted to spending only two and a half 
drachmas; but he might consume annually 120 
Roman pounds of meat for each person in his house, 
and eat at discretion of all plants and herbs that grew 
wild ; and, indeed, little restriction was put upon 
vegetables at all. One consequence was, that this 
law against luxury begot a great deal of it, and 
ruined men’s stomachs in consequence. When the 
French mayor ordered all good citizens in his dark 
district to carry lanterns at night, he forgot to say a 
word about candles, and the wits walked about with 
the lanterns unfurnished. The official rectified the 
mistake by ordering the candles; but as he omitted 
to say that these were to be lighted, the public did 
not profit by the decree. So the Lex Faunia, when 
it allowed unrestrained liberty in thistles, forgot to 
limit sauces; and vegetables generally were eaten 
with such luscious aids to which the name of “sauce” 
was given, that even the grave Cicero yielded to the 
temptation, spoiled his digestion, and got a liver com- 


144 TABLE TRAITS 


plaint! After all, it is: said that only three Romans 
could be found who rigorously observed the Faunza 
law, according to their oaths. These were men more 
easily satisfied than Apicius, who cried like a child, 
when, of all his vast fortune, he had only about 4250,- 
ooo sterling that he could devote to gluttony; or 
than Lucullus, who never supped in the “Apollo” 
without its costing him at least £10,000. 

Notwithstanding this, the faunza law was an 
absurd impertinence. It was like the folly of Antig- 
onus, who one day, seeing the poet Antagoras in the 
camp, cooking a dish of congers for his dinner, asked, 
“QO Antagoras, dost thou think that Homer sang the 
deeds of heroes while he boiled fish?” ‘And you, 
O king,” returned the poet, “thinkest thou that 
Agamemnon gained renown for his exploits, by try- 
ing to find out who had boiled fish for dinner in his 
camp?” The moral is, that it is best to leave men 
at liberty to eat as they like. Society is strong 
enough to make laws on these matters for itself; 
and no one now could commit the crime of the greedy _ 
Demylos, who, to secure a superb dish of fish for 
himself, évértucev eis airyv, “spat in it;” and if my 
readers refer to the chapter illustrating “ Their Maj- 
esties at Meat,” they will find that so dirty a trick 
was not the reserved privilege of heathenism. 

The Pythagoreans were clean eaters, and dined 
daily on bread and honey. On the smell of the 
latter Democritus did not indeed dine, but died. He 
had determined to commit suicide, and had cut down 
his allowance to such small rations, that his death 
was expected daily. But the fun and the festival of 
Ceres was at hand; and the ladies of his house 


DINNER TRAITS 145 


begged him to be good enough not to spoil the frolic 
by dying at such a mirthful moment. He consented, 
asked for a pot of honey, and kept himself alive by 
smelling at it, till the festival was over, when his 
family hoped that he would die whenever he found it 
convenient. He took one sniff more at the pot, and 
in the effort his breath passed away for ever. There 
was nothing reprehensible in the conduct of those 
ladies. They did not outrage the spirit of their 
times. I think worse of Madame du Deffand, who 
went out to dine on the day her old lover died, re- 
marking, as she entered the room, how lucky it was 
that he had expired before six o'clock, as otherwise 
she would have been too late for the gay party ex- 
pecting her. The brilliant society who played cards 
by the side of the bed of the dying Mlle. de |’Espi- 
nasse, and counted their tricks while they commented 
upon her “rattles,” may be pronounced as being 
twice as pagan as the ladies of the household of 
Democritus. | 

A small portion of soup is a good preparative to 
excite the digestive powers generally for what is to 
follow. Oysters form a far less commonly safe in- 
troduction to the more solid repast, their chill, which 
even Chablis cannot always rectify, paralysing rather 
than arousing the stomach. The French douzliz 
after soup is a dangerous vulgarity; for it is simply 
as a distinguished professor has styled it, “meat, all 
but its nourishing juice.” 

“Poultry,” says M. Brillat, “is to the sick man 
who has been floating over an uncertain and uneasy 
sea, like the first odour or sight of land to the storm- 
beaten mariner.” But a skilful cook can render 


146 TABLE TRAITS 


almost any dish attractive to any and every quality 
of appetite. _ In this respect, the French and Chinese 
cooks are really professional brethren; much more so 
than a general practitioner and a veterinary surgeon ! 

The Chinese are exceedingly skilful cooks, and 
exhibit taste and judgment in the selection of their 
food. With a few beans, and the meal of rice and 
corn, they will make a palatable and nutritious dish. 
They eat horse-flesh, rats, mice, and young dogs. 
Why not? All these are far cleaner feeders than pigs 
and lobsters. A thoroughbred horse is so nice in 
his appetite, that he will refuse the corn which has 
been breathed upon by another horse. The Tonquin 
birds’ nests eaten in China may be described as 
young Mr. Fudge describes the Paris grisettes: 
“Rather eatable things, those grisettes, by the 
bye!”’ So are the birds’ nests, composed as they are 
of small shell-fish and a glutinous matter, supplied 
by the plumed inhabitant of the edible houses. 
Bears’ paws, rolled in pepper and nutmeg, dried in 
the sun, and subsequently soaked in rice-water, and 
boiled in the gravy of a kid, form a dish that would 
make ecstatic the grave Confucius himself. 

There are some men for whom cooks toil in vain. 
The Duke of Wellington’s cook had serious doubts 
as to his master being a great man, —he so loved 
simple fare. Suwarrow was another general who was 
the despair of cooks. His biographer says of him, 
that he was at dinner when Colonel Hamilton ap- 
peared before him to announce an Austrian victory 
over the French. The general had one huge plate 
before him, a sort of Irish stew, with everything for 
sauce, from which he ate greedily, spitting out the 


DINNER TRAITS 147 


bones, “‘as was his custom.” He was so delighted 
with the message and the messenger, that he received 
him as Galba did Icelus, the announcer of Nero’s 
death: with his unwiped mouth he began kissing the 
latter (as the half-shaven Duke of Newcastle once 
did the bearer of some welcome intelligence), and 
insisted on his sitting down and eating from the gen- 
eral’s plate, “without ceremony.” The great Coligny 
was, like Suwarrow, a rapid eater, but he was more 
nice in his diet. The characteristic of Coligny was, 
that he always used to eat his toothpicks. 

According to ancient rule, an invitation not replied 
to within four and twenty hours was deemed ac- 
cepted ; and from an invitation given and accepted, 
nothing releases the contracting parties but illness, 
imprisonment, or death! Nothing suffers so much by 
delay as dinner; and if punctuality be the politeness 
of kings, it should also be the policy both of guests 
and cooks. Lack of punctuality on the part of the 
former has been illustrated in the cases of men, of 
whom it is said that they never saw soup and fish but 
at their own tables. The late Lord Dudley Ward used 
to cite two brothers as startling examples of want of 
punctuality: “If you asked Robert for Wednesday, 
at seven, you got Charles on Thursday, at eight!” 
On the other hand an unpunctual cook is scarcely to 
be accounted a cook; and an unpunctual master is 
not worthy of a cook whose dinner is ready to be 
served at the moment it has been ordered. The 
great ‘‘artiste’’ who dismissed his patron because he 
never sat down to dinner until after he had kept it 
waiting for an hour, was thoroughly acquainted with 
the dignity of his profession. 


s 


148 TABLE TRAITS 


At the beginning of the present century, it was 
the custom in France to serve the soup immediately 
before the company entered the dining-room. The 
resulting advantage was a simultaneous operation on 
the part of the guests. The innovation was intro- 
duced by Mlle. Emilie Contat, the actress ; but it was 
tolerated only for a season. It was, at the same 
period, of rigorous necessity, when eggs were eaten 
at dinner, to crush the empty shell. To allow the 
latter to’leave the table whole was a breach in good 
manners; but the reason of this prandial law I have 
never been able to discover. Mlle. Contat was almost 
as famous for her love of good cheer as our own 
Foote, and both were, equally often, “on hospitable 
thoughts intent.” 

It would appear that in Foote’s time Scotland was 
not famous for a lavish hospitality. The old actor 
gave some glorious dinners to the first people in the 
city, and his preliminary proceedings thereto were 
intended to be highly satirical upon what he consid- 
ered Scottish parsimony. Every night, before retir- 
ing to bed, he used to paper the curls of his wig with 
Scotch bank-notes, — promissory paper, as he said, 
of no value. When his cook waited on him at break- 
fast-time for orders, “Sam” gravely uncurled his 
locks, flung the papers to the attendant, as purchase- 
money for the necessary provisions, and sent her to 
market in a sedan-chair. But the old actor was as 
eccentric and ostentatious at his own table in London 
as he was anywhere. When the wines were placed 
on the board, he solemnly, and as it were with a 
shade of disgust, inquired, “If anybody drank port ?”’ 
As no one dared to answer in the affirmative at his 


DINNER TRAITS 149 


table (though the owner took it “medicinally ”’), he 
would direct the servant to “take away the ink!” 

If Foote disliked port, Bentley, on the other hand, 
had a contempt for claret, “which,” said he, “would 
be port, if it could!”” The latter individual was not 
like Flood, the Irishman, who used to raise his glass 
of claret aloft, with a cry, “Jf this be war, may we 
never have peace!”’ 

Comparatively speaking, claret is a very modern 
wine. Indeed, none. of the Bordeaux wines were 
fashionable, that is, consumed in large quantities out 
of the province, before the reign of Louis XV. That 
sovereign is said to have asked Richelieu if Bor- 
deaux wines were “drinkable.” ‘From father to 
son the Bourbon race,” says Bungener, in his incom- 
parable work, “Trois Sermons sous Louis XIV.,” 
ate and drank with relish; and it was no jest that 
among the three talents attributed by the old song to 
Henri IV. (their ancestor), was numbered that of a 
“good drinker.”’ ‘ None of them, however, with the 
exception of the regent, carried it to excess; but 
what was not excess for them, would have been so 
for many others. Louis XIV., at the summit of his 
glory, and Louis XVI., surrounded by his jailors, 
submitted equally to the laws of their imperious appe- 
tite.” 

When Louis XV. asked Richelieu if Bordeaux 
wines were drinkable, the duke answered him in 
terms which I may cite because of their correctness. 
« Sire,” he replied, “they have what they call ‘white 
Sauterne,’ which, though far from being so good as 
that of Monrachet, or that of the little slopes in Bur- 
gundy, is still not to be despised. There is also a 


150 TABLE TRAITS 


certain wine from Grave, which smacks of the flint, 
like an old carbine. It resembles Moselle wine, but 
keeps better. They have besides, in Medoc and 
Bazadois, two or three sorts of red wine, of which 
they boast a great deal. It is nectar fit for the gods, 
if one is to believe them. Yet it is certainly not com- 
parable to the wine of Upper Burgundy. Its flavour 
is not bad, however, and it has an indescribable sort 
of dull, saturnine acid, which is not disagreeable. 
Besides, one can drink as much as one will. It puts 
people to sleep, and that is all.” “It puts people to 
sleep,” said the king; “send for a pipe of it!” This 
is as just a description of good, healthy Bordeaux, as 
was that given by Sheridan, I believe, of champagne : 
“It does not enter,” he said, ‘and steal your reason ; 
it simply makes a runaway knock at a man’s head, 
and there’s an end of it!” 

But we are indulging in too much wine at dinner. 
Let us return to the solids. Of the self-important 
personages who daily cross our path, perhaps the 
most important circumstance of their life is, that they 
have dined every day of it. But it is a necessity. 
All men must, or should; and sorrow of the saddest 
sort is subdued before the anguish of appetite. As 
Jules Janin says, in his ‘Gaietiés Champétres,” 
« Nemorin takes leave of Estelle, and returns home, 
overcome by hunger. Don Kyrie Eleison de Mon- 
tauban, after running all day long, after Mlle. Blai- 
sir-de-ma-vie, goes and knocks at the door of the 
neighbouring chateau, and asks to be invited to sup- 
per. Niobe herself, in the Iliad, as afflicted as woman 
can be, does not forget, when night comes, to take a 
little refreshment.’’ If Seneca derided such doings, 


DINNER TRAITS ISI 


it was only after dinner, when appetite failed him. 
Human nature is made up of sentiment and hunger ; 
and Hood’s sentimentalist was not unnatural with his 
epicurean reminiscences, when he said : 


“Twas at Christmas, I think, that I met with Miss Chase, — 
Yes, for Morris had ask’d me to dine; 
And I thought I had never beheld such a face, 
Or so noble a turkey and chine.” 


This conglomeration of feeling and feeding is 
mixed up with all the acts of most importance in our 
lives; and though Bacchus, Cupid, Comus, and Diana 
be no longer the deities or the deati of the earth, 
the substantial worship remains; and, as M. Brillat 
Savarin asserts, under the most serious of all beliefs, 
we celebrate by repasts not only births, baptisms, 
and marriages, but even interments. 

The last-named writer fixes the era of dinners from 
the time when men, ceasing to live upon fruits, took 
to flesh; for then the family necessarily assembled to 
devour what had been slain and cooked. They knew 
the pleasures of eating, which is the satisfaction of 
the animal appetite; but the true, refined pleasures 
of the table date only from the time when Prometheus 
fired the soul with heavenly flame, from which sprang 
intellect, with a host of radiant followers in its train. 
A good dinner sharpens wit, while it softens the 
heart. A hungry man is as slow at a joke as he is 
at a favour. 

Nelson never knew the sensation of “fear,” but 
when he was asked to dine with a mayor. He had 
a horror of great dinners generally: and he was 
right ; for true intellectual enjoyment is seldom there. 


152 TABLE TRAITS 


Horace, with his modest repasts and fair wine, was 
something of the same opinion as Horatio. Where 
the wine is indifferent, the guests too numerous and 
ill-assorted, the spirit heavy, the time short, and the 
repast too eagerly consumed, there is no dinner, in 
the legitimate sense of the word. I never so much 
admired one of the most hospitable of Amphitryons, 
my friend M. Watier, as when he once prefaced one 
of his exquisite dinners by saying, with a solemn 
smile, “ Wes amis, ne nous pressons pas!” I thought 
of Talleyrand and his advice to a too willing secre- 
tary: “ Surtout, pas de zele!". The most accom- 
plished professor of his time has laid down, as rules 
for securing to their utmost degree the prandial 
pleasures of table, that the guests do not exceed 
twelve, so that the conversation be general; that they 
be of varied occupations, but analogous tastes; that 
the lighting, cheerful cleanliness, and temperature of 
the dining-room be carefully considered; that the 
viands be exquisite rather than numerous, and the 
wines of first quality, each in its degree; the pro- 
gression of the former from the more substantial to 
the more light ; of the latter, from the more brilliant 
to the more perfumed. It is further enjoined that 
there be no accelerated movement ; all the guests are 
to consider themselves as fellow travellers, bound to 
reach one point at the same time. The rules for the 
“after-dinner” in the drawing-room are those more 
commonly observed in this country, with the excep- 
tion that “punch” expired when lemons ceased to be 
dear at the Peace; but the concluding rule is worth 
noticing: “That no one withdraw before eleven, 
and that’all be asleep by midnight.” 


DINNER TRAITS rs3 


I have spoken of the aids which the French no- 
bility have given to table enjoyment. To them may 
be added the innovation, introduced by Talleyrand, of 
offering Parmesan with soup, and presenting after 
it a glass of dry Madeira. ‘Talleyrand had one thing 
in common with St. Peter, — he was hungry at the 
hour of midday, the dinner-time of the Jews ; and he 
would have also come under the anathema in Eccle- 
siastes which is levelled against the princes who eat 
in the morning. 

Plato was rather shocked at those people of Italy 
who made two substantial meals daily; and Seneca 
was satisfied with one meal, —a dinner of bread and 
figs. The Roman priests of Mars dined _jollily 
and sumptuously in a secret room of the temple, 
and they would not be disturbed. They were like 
Baillie de Suffren, who, being waited on in India by 
a deputation, just as he was sitting down to dine, 
sent out word that his religion would not allow of his 
interrupting his repast; and the delegates retired, 
profoundly struck by the strictness of his conscience. 
The original dinner-hour of the medizval ages was, 
as I have elsewhere stated, ten o'clock, the adzxrzéme 
heure ; hence the name. It was not till the reign of 
Louis XIV. that so late an hour as noon was fixed 
for the repast. It is clear, however, that we have 
not so much changed the hours as changed the names 
of our meals. A French historian shows us how a 
Dauphin of France dined (at ten o’clock) in the 
fifteenth century : 

«As an every-day fare, the Dauphin took for his 
dinner rice pottage, with leeks or cabbage, a piece of 
beef, another of salt pork, a dish of six hens or twelve 


154 TABLE TRAITS 


pullets, divided in two, a piece of roast pork, cheese, 
and fruit.” The supper was nearly as plentiful; but, 
on particular days, the bill of fare was varied. It is 
added, that the barons of the court had always the 
half of the quantity of the Dauphin; the knights, 
the quarter; and the equerries and chaplains, the 
eighth. ‘Take pride from priests, and nothing re- 
mains,’ once remarked an encyclopzdist to Voltaire. 
“Umph!” said Voltaire; ‘do you, then, reckon 
gluttony for nothing ?’’ Gluttony, at least, does not 
seem to have characterised the Dauphin’s chaplains, 
in the fifteenth century, seeing that they took an 
eighth where a baron had half. | 

But there was a late Prince of Bourbon, who dined 
after a more singular fashion than that of the 
Dauphins, his ancestors. I allude to the prince men- 
tioned by Maurepas, and whose imagination was so 
sick, that he fancied himself a hare, and would not 
allow a bell to be rung, lest it should terrify him into 
the woods, where he might be shot by his own game- 
keepers, and afterward served up at his own table. 
At another time, he had a fancy that he would look 
well dished up; and, dreaming himself a cauliflower, 
he stuck his feet in the mould of his kitchen-garden, 
and called upon his people to come and water him! 
At length, he pronounced himself dead, and refused 
to dine at all, as an insult to his spiritual entity. He 
would have died, had he not been visited by two 
friends, who introduced themselves as his late father, 
and the deceased Maréchal de Luxembourg; and who 
solemnly invited him to descend with them to the 
shades, and dine with the ghost of Maréchal Turenne. 
The melancholy prince accepted with alacrity, and 


DINNER TRAITS 155 


went down with them to a cellar already prepared 
for the banquet of the departed; and he not only 
made a hearty meal, but, as long as his fancy made 
of himself a ghost, he insisted every day on dining 
with congenial shadows in the coal-cellar! In spite 
of this monomaniacal fantasy, he was excessively 
shrewd in all matters of business, especially where 
his own interests were concerned. 

Thus much — briefly and imperfectly, I fear — for 
dinner traits. In the next chapter we will put 
something on them. And as we have been drawing 
examples from folly, let us end this section by adding 
a maxim full of wisdom. ‘Be not made a beggar,” 
says Ecclesiasticus, “by banqueting upon borrowing, 
when thou hast nothing in thy purse.” If this maxim 
were generally adopted, there might be fewer dinners 
given, but there would be more dinners paid for. 
But some people are like the ancient Belgians, who 
borrowed, and, indeed, lent, upon promises of repay- 
ment in the world to come! Many a dinner-giver 
belongs to the class of the borrowing Belgians of 
antiquity. After all, there was, perhaps, more in- 
tended honesty in the compact than we can dis- 
tinguish. A compact far less honest was made some 
years ago by an Irish baronet, who had given so 
many dinners for which he had not paid, that he was 
compelled to pledge his plate in order to raise means 
to satisfy the most pressing of his creditors. Some 
time subsequently, he induced the pawnbroker to lend 
him the plate for one evening, on hire; the pawn- 
broker’s men were to wait at the dinner in livery, and 
convey the silver back as soon as the repast was con- 
cluded. The dinner was given and enjoyed, and 


156 TABLE TRAITS 


the company made the attendants drunk, helped the 
baronet to pack up his forks, spoons, ladles, and 
épergnes, with which he set off for Paris, where some 
of them afterward visited him at the little dinners he 
used to give in the Rue de Bourbon, and laughed 
over the matter as a very capital jest. 

I will only add here the record of the fact, that 
sitting at table to drink, after dinner was over, was 
introduced by Margaret Atheling, the Saxon Queen 
of Scotland. She was shocked to see the Scottish 
gentlemen rise from table before grace could be said 
by her chaplain, Turgot; and she offered a cup of | 
choice wine to all who would remain. Thence the 
fashion of hard drinking following the “thanks- 
giving.” 


The Materials for Dining 
«Art flesh is grass;” and grass has been the , 
foundation of all feasts, in a double sense. It was 
not only a part of the early repast, in some shape or 
another, by derivation rather than immediately, but it 
formed the most ancient seats occupied by primitive 
and pastoral guests in very remote times. Doctor 
Johnson approved of asparagus being called “grass.” 
Romulus thought grass a sacred emblem, or he 
would not have suddenly converted his twelve lay 
foster-brothers into a priesthood to look after it. 
When Baber had defeated the Afghans of Kohat, 
they approached him in despair, and, according to 
their custom when in extremities, with grass between 
their teeth, to signify, as the imperial autobiographer 
says, “We are your oxen.” Baber treated them 
worse than oxen; for the amiable savage says, “ All 
that were taken alive were beheaded by my order, 
and at the next halting-place we erected a minaret of 
their skulls.” And the conqueror dined pleasantly in 
front of the monument. 

My friend, Captain Lionel da Costa, tells me, that 
on accompanying (eu amateur) a French force on a 
razzia against an Arab tribe in Algeria, he witnessed 
the employment of grass as an emblem of defiance 
rather than of submission. The French officers had 

157 


158 TABLE TRAITS 


assembled the Arab chiefs, and, telling them that the 
foreigners had filled up their wells, carried off their 
cattle, and burned their dwellings, exhorted them to 
submission, asking them what they would do further 
against a country so powerful as France? The 
Arabs, as if impelled simultaneously, stooped to 
the earth, plucked some scant blades of grass there 
growing, and began chewing the same in angry 
silence: this was all their reply, and by it they 
intimated that they would eat what the earth gave, 
like the beasts that are upon it, rather than sur- 
render. Their enemies could not refrain from ad- | 
miring and feeding such adversaries; their mute 
eloquence was worth more than anything uttered 
to tyrants by Power’s statue of the Greek Slave, 
which, according to Mrs. Elizabeth Browning, “thun- 
ders white silence,’ —a silence that must have been 
akin to that in the French tragedy, “ szlence guz se fit 
entendre !” 

Soup, as I have remarked, is not a bad preparation 
for the stomach. Some one calls it the “preface of 
a dinner,” adding, however, that a good work needs 
no preface. Soup is of very ancient date. Rebecca 
and Jacob ate of a pottage, in which the meat was 
cut into small bits before the muscular fibres had 
cooled and become hardened, and stewed in milk, 
thickened with meal and herbs. The famous French 
gastronomist, the Marquis de Cussy, was orthodox in 
his gastronomy, fed well, but heeded the Church. 
His favourite soup in Lent was an onion soup, com- 
posed of a score of small bulbs, well cleaned, sliced, 
and put into a stew-pan, with a lump of fresh butter 
and a little sugar. They were turned over the fire 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 159 


till they became of a fine golden colour, when they 
were moistened with broth, and the necessary quan- 
tity of bread added. Before the soup was served, its 
excellence was perfected by the addition of two small 
glasses of very old cognac brandy. This Lent fare 
was, however, only the preface to salmon and aspara- 
gus, with which the orthodox epicure mortified his 
appetite. 

The famous Careme did with the soups he dis- 
covered, what the most famous navigators have done 
with the new territories on which they were the first 
to land; namely, gave them the names of the most 
illustrious contemporaries then existing. Royalty 
was honoured in the Potage Condé; music in that of 
Boteldieu ; and the medical faculty, which Caréme 
generally despised, in the soupes a la Broussats, 
Roques, and Segalas; poetry was illustrated in the 
Lamartine ; history in the Dumesnzl; and philosophy 
in the Potage Buffon. The last name he thus be- 
stowed, was to his last culinary inspiration just 
before death, when he conferred on a vegetable 
soup the name of Victor Hugo. It was after reading 
the ‘“ Messéniennes,”’ that he created the matelotte a 
la Delavigne ; and he paid the doctor who had cured 
him of an indigestion, by inventing the dish of fish 
which he called perche a la Gaubert. And with this 
record we will put the fish on our own table. 

“Tt is only the Arabs of the desert that affect to 
despise fish.” This Eastern proverb is tantamount 
to the more homely one of, “The grapes are sour ;” 
for the Arabs only affect to despise that which they 
cannot readily obtain. The Jews were prohibited 
from eating fishes without scales or fins. The 


160 TABLE TRAITS 


Egyptian priests cared not for fish of any sort, but 
they generally allowed the people to eat with what 
appetite they chose, of what the priesthood declined 
to taste. ‘It is said in the legend, that St. Kevin 
lived by the fish he caught in the Lake of Glenda- 
loch ; and that when the celebrated beauty tempted 
him, she did it by flattery and suggestion : 


‘©¢ You’re a rare hand at fishing,’ says Kate, 
‘It’s yourself, dear, that knows how to hook them; 

But when you have caught them, agrah! 
Don’t you want a young woman to cook them?’” 


Gatis, Queen of Spain, was something like Mr. 
Lover’s “Kate;” for, if her subjects caught fish 
well, she it was who first taught them how to cook 
what they caught, and how to enjoy what they 
cooked. 3 

When philosophers were occupied with inquiries 
touching the soul of an oyster, fish was probably not 
a popular diet. It certainly was not so in Greece, 
until a comparatively late period. Then fish became 
fashionable: the legislature secured their freshness 
by decreeing that no seller should sit down until he 
had sold his entire stock; sages discussed their qual- 
ities, and tragic writers introduced heroes holding 
dialogues on the qualities of fish-sauce. There was 
a Greek society at that day “against cruelty to fish,” 
by devouring what also, allegedly, made the devourer 
ferocious and inhuman; but general society did not 
allow its appetite to be influenced thereby. 

The Romans were enthusiastic for the mullet. It 
was for them the fish par excellence. It was some- 
times served up six pounds in weight, and sucha fish 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 161 


was worth £60 sterling. It was cooked on the 
table, for the benefit and pleasure of the guests. In 
a glass vessel filled with brine made from water, the 
blood of the mackerel, and salt, the live mullet, 
stripped of its scales, was enclosed; and as its fine 
pink colour passed through its dying gradations, until 
paleness and death ensued, the convives looked on 
admiringly, and lauded the spectacle. 

The turbot was next in estimation; but as, occa- 
sionally, offending slaves were flung into the turbot 
preserves for the fish to feed upon, some gastrono- 
mists have affected to be horror-stricken at the idea 
of eating a turbot a la Romaine; quite forgetting 
that so many of our sea-fish, in their own domain, 
feed largely on the human bodies which accident, or 
what men call by that name, casts into the deep. 
Our own early ancestors in Britain were said to have 
entirely abstained from fish. In later days, however, 
here as in France, the finny tribes were protected by 
royal decrees; and certain fish were named — the 
sturgeon was one—as to be caught for the royal 
table alone. In the same days porpoises and seals 
were devoured by the commonalty, and the latter 
knew not the art of the cooks of Louis XIV., who 
could so dress fish as to give it the taste of any flesh 
they pleased to fix on as an object of imitation, By 
this means, the king in Lent, while he obeyed the 
Church, enjoyed the gratification of feeling as though 
he were cheating Heaven, — and with impunity, too! 

The most curious fish of which I have ever read, 
were those of a lake attached to a Burgundian con- 
vent, and which were always of the same number as 
the monks. If one of these sickened and died, the 


162 TABLE TRAITS 


same circumstance occurred with the fish; and if a 
new brother appeared in the refectory, there was 
also sure to be found a new denizen in the pond. 
These fish were, of course, piously inclined; but 
they did not come up, in that respect, to the parrot 
of Cardinal Ascanius, which could not only repeat the 
Creed, but could maintain a thesis! I believe that the 
Burgundian fish were principally perch; and they 
are an eccentric fish. Arthur Young says, that 
‘‘about the year 1760, perch first appeared in all the 
lakes of Ireland “and in the Shannon at the same 
time.” , 

As a singularity with respect to the cooking of 
fish, I may mention that observed by the Romans 
with the sepza, or “cuttle-fish.” They invariably 
took out the eyes before boiling it. It is in allu- 
sion to this custom that Trachalion says, in the 
BS nidens 37) 

“ Age nunc jam, 
Jube oculos elidere, itidem ut sepiis faciunt coqui.” 


I think I have read somewhere, that the cuttle- 
fish was esteemed a fitting sacrifice to the gods; but 
I do not know if pious people had their pet sepze, as 
they had their pet lambs and pigs (“ Sunt domi agni 
et porct sacres,” says the orthodox husband in the 
“ Rudens ’’), reared for the purpose of being offered 
at the altars. 

The sturgeon is at this day, in China, reserved for 
the imperial table. At those of Greece it was intro- 
duced by sound of trumpet, and it was almost as 
esteemed a subject at those of Rome, until Vespasian 
condescended not to care for it, and to bring other 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 163 


fish into fashion. “It is caviare to the general,”’ is 
a proverb which Shakespeare has popularised. The 
caviare is the roe of the sturgeon dried; that of the 
larger sturgeon, which produces hundredweights of 
eggs, and tons of oil, is caviare for the general, and 
is not worth eating. The delicate white caviare is 
the produce of the smaller sturgeon, and it is highly 
esteemed by gastronomists. It forms a great portion 
of the food taken by the Greeks during their long 
Lent. 

We have heard of an American who tried to tame 
an oyster. The Romans were more successful with 
‘their sea-eels, which would come when called, and 
feed from the hands of men, who occasionally fat- 
tened them upon live slaves. Vedius Pollio would 
have grown sick and disgusted, if he had been asked 
to eat one of these slaves; but he was particularly 
fond of the fish that had been fed upon such fare; 
and so he only ate his slaves at second-hand; for 
their flesh was declared by him to have greatly im- 
proved the taste of the eel. Epicures with less 
ferocious appetites preferred the fish that had been 
fattened upon veal steeped in blood. Vitellius put 
the fish altogether out of fashion by only eating the 
roes, which were procured for him at a great 
expense; and Heliogabalus caused even the roes 
to cease to be modish, by forcing them upon the 
Mediterranean peasants, who got as sick of their 
repasts as English servants in the Scottish High- 
lands grow weary of the everlasting sameness of 
their dinners consisting of venison and salmon. The 
Egyptians placed the sea-eel in their pantheon; and 
even the unorthodox cannot deny that he was as 


164 TABLE TRAITS 


good a deity as any to be found there; and we are 
told that among the Sybarites, the fishers and 
vendors of the eel were exempt from taxation! The 
origin of these honours is, however, unknown. Nearly 
as great were offered, even in Rome, to the fish 
known as the sea-wolf, which abounded in the most 
filthy parts of the Tiber, and which some epicures 
distinguished by the appellation of ‘child of the 
gods.’ The Romans paid high prices for it, as they 
did for the regicide lamprey, —a fish which killed 
our first Henry, and which Italian cooks used to kill, 
as the murderers did maudlin Clarence, in the 
Malmsey butt, by plunging the victim, decked for 
the sacrifice with a nutmeg in his mouth, and a clove 
in either gill, into a pan of Candian wine; after 
which, covered with almonds, bread crumbs, and 
spices, he was exposed to a slow fire, and then to the 
jaws that impatiently awaited him. It was once as 
popular as the tunny, —a fish, by the way, which 
once so enriched the city of Sinope, that the coin 
minted there bore the figure of the fish. Where they 
are found at all, it is generally in shoals; but these 
are never to the extent which Pliny speaks of, when 
he says that they so obstructed the fleet of Alex- 
ander, that the pilots of the Macedonian madman 
were compelled to shape a different course; and 
though they are to be found in something like abun- 
dance in the Mediterranean, yet tourists who resort 
thither must not expect to see realised the gay pic- 
ture of Vernet. It does not appear, however, that 
the tunny was ever in such favour at ancient tables 
as the eel, which was greedily eaten where it was not 
devoutly worshipped, or where medical ordinances 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 165 


had not been directed against it, as unfavourable to 
the weak of digestion, and perilous to those affected 
by pulmonary diseases. The pike, emblem of fecun- 
dity and example of lengthened years, was still less 
popular. The carp, which even surpasses the pike 
in fecundity, and is a long liver to boot, was, on the 
other hand, an especial favourite, but it was served 
up with sauces that would certainly not tempt a 
modern gastronomist to eat a fish which is seldom 
worth eating, and which is almost defiant of diges- 
tion. Carp, reduced to a pulp, and served up with 
sows paps, and yolk of egg, must have been as nasty 
as goldfish with carrots and myrtle leaves, — the 
delight of the Roman loungers at their “ Blackwall,” 
on the Tiber. So the Greeks spoiled good cod by 
eating it with grated cheese and vinegar; and the 
Romans made perch more indigestible than it was 
before, by swallowing Damascus plums with it. But 
the ancients had strangely accommodating stomachs : 
a sauce of honey could induce them to eat cuttlefish. 
Garlic and cheese made the swordfish delicacies; the 
rhombus floated into Greek stomachs on a sauce of 
wine and brine; the ladies of Rome ate onions with 
the muzil, and pine-nuts with the pilchard. The more 
refined Greeks, on the other hand, would not touch 
the pilchard; and the same difference of taste ex- 
isted with regard to the loach; while, again, both 
Rome and Greece united in admiration of the gudg- 
eon. To neither of these countries was the herring 
known. The Scots found the fish, and the Dutch 
bought, pickled, and sold, or ate them; and it is said 
that Charles V., in 1536, ate a herring upon the tomb 
of Beuckels, the first salter of that fish, and there- 


166 TABLE TRAITS 


with friend of the poor, and enricher of the state. 
The profit realised by Holland exceeded two millions 
and a half sterling, annually. But neither Greece 
nor Rome felt the want of the herring while there 
was an abundant supply of the favourite oyster. 
This shell-fish was easily procured by the Greeks 
from Pelorus, Abydos, and Polarea; by the Romans, 
from Brindés, the Lake of Lucrinus, Armorica, and 
even from Britain. The Romans were hardly worthy © 
of the delicacy, seeing that they abused it by mincing 
oysters, mussels, and sea-hedgehogs together, stewed 
the whole with pine-almonds and hot condiments, 
and devoured the mixture scalding! Others, how- 
ever, ate them raw, when they were opened at table 
by a slave; and the larger the fish, the more the 
Roman epicures liked them. They were not only 
eaten before a feast to stimulate the appetite, but 
during a banquet, when the appetite began to be 
palled. They excited to fresh exertion, and it was a 
cleaner custom (perhaps) than that imperial one of 
exonerating the stomach by tickling the throat with 
a peacock’s feather. The Bordeaux oyster was the 
favourite fish of most of the emperors. It is very 
inferior to the Whitstable oyster, however, and also 
to that which goes by the name of “ Colchester,” and 
which is not caught there. The passion for the 
savoury fish is well illustrated in the epitaph which 
Says : 





“ ‘Tom 

Lies buried in these cloisters ; 
If, at the last trump, 

He does not quickly jump, 
Only cry ‘ Oysters!’” 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 167 


If the emperors affected oysters, the gods them- 
selves patronised mussels, a dish of which was con- 
tributed by Jupiter to the wedding-banquet of Hebe. 
The mythological sanction has, however, failed to 
render the mussel popular, and for good reasons. It 
is often extremely poisonous, and in certain condi- 
tions of the stomach they who eat mussels may 
reckon upon being attacked by violent cutaneous 
disorders, painfully participated in by the oppressed 
intestines. 

It was otherwise with the tortoise, the blood of 
which was reckoned good in cases of ophthalmia, and 
the flesh of which was eagerly devoured. The nat- 
ural history of the products of those early times 
seems to have been written by philosophers with 
very poetical imaginations. We read of shells of 
tortoises being converted into roofs of cottages, as 
we are told by Pliny of crawfish measuring four 
cubits in length. It was then that men ate lobsters 
au naturel, and crabs converted into sausages. But 
this latter dish was a more dainty one than that af- 
forded by the frog, — the abhorrence of early gastron- 
omists, but the delight of many French and German 
epicures, who first find delight in angling for these 
unclean beasts with a bait of yellow soap, and then 
swallowing with delight more intense the hind-quar- 
ters of the animal they have caught. But if the 
moderns swallow frogs, the ancients ate the polypus, . 
—and which were the nastiest even I could not tell. 
The Romans were especially fond of fish; and some 
“fast ’ epicures among them not only had preserve 
ponds of fish on the roofs of their houses, but little 
rivulets stocked therewith around the dinner-table, 


168 TABLE TRAITS 


whence the guests selected their fish, and delivered 
them to be cooked. 

It was once thought that the prawn, or shrimp, 
was somehow necessary to the production of soles, 
acting, it was believed, as a sort of nurse, or foster- 
parent, to the spawn. But this I suppose to be about 
as true as that soles always swim in pairs, with three- 
pennyworth of shrimps behind them, ready for 
sauce. 

I remember two anecdotes connected with fish at 
table, which a guest may retail when he is next at 
that period of the repast. Talleyrand was dining, in 
the year 1805, with the minister of finance, who did 
the honours of his house in the very best style. A 
very fine carp was on the table opposite to Talley- 
rand, but the fish was already cold. ‘That is a mag- 
nificent carp,’ said the financier ; “how do you like 
it? It came from my estate of Vir-sur-Aisne,” “ Did 
it?” said Talleyrand, ‘but why did you not have it 
cooked here?”’ This reply was not as fatal to the 
utterer of it, as a remark once made by Poodle Byng 
at Belvoir Castle. “Ah, ah!” he exclaimed, as he 
saw the fish uncovered at the Duke of Rutland’s 
board, “my old friend Haddock! I have not seen a 
haddock, at a gentleman’s table, since I was a boy.” 
The implication shut the gates of Belvoir on the un- 
lucky Poodle from that day forward. He was never 
again the duke’s guest. 

Some French writers have asserted, after tracing 
the “vestiges of creation”’ according to a fashion of 
their own, that man originally sprang from the ocean ; 
and that his present condition is one of development, 
the consequence of life ashore, and exposure to atmos- 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 169 


pheric air. According to this theory, I suppose, 
Venus Anadyomene was the Eve of our fishy genera- 
tion, and mermaids show the transition state, when 
our ancestors were of both land and sea, and yet 
properly of neither. 

As judges of fish, the moderns are inferior to the 
ancients. A Greek or Roman epicure could, at first 
sight, tell in what waters the fish before him had 
been caught. This sort of wisdom is, however, not 
uncommon to oyster-eaters, who swallow so greedily 
what contains little nourishment, but what may be 
easily digested. It was not unusual, some years ago, 
in France, for a gourmand to prepare for dinner by 
swallowing a gross, or a dozen dozen, of oysters. 
Twelve of them, including the liquor, will weigh four 
ounces ; and the gross, four pounds (Troy) ! —a pretty 
amount of ballast whereupon to take in freight. The 
skin of such a feeder had need be in a good condi- 
tion; but so, indeed, ought that of every one who 
cares for his digestion. When we remember that a 
person in health, who takes eight pounds of aliment 
during twenty-four hours of his wakefulness, dis- 
charges five of the eight pounds solely through the 
pores by perspiration, it will at once be seen that to 
hold the skin clean, and keep the pores unobstructed, 
is of first-rate necessity for the sake of digestion and 
comfort. 

There are seaboard populations who live almost 
exclusively on fish. They feed their domestic ani- 
mals upon it, and with it manure their ground; so 
that the pork they may occasionally indulge in 
acquires a fish-like flavour, and their bread is but a 
consequence of the plentiful rottenness of sprats. 


170 TABLE TRAITS 


Such populations are usually lean and sallow, but 
they are strong-muscled and active-limbed ; and alto- 
gether they afford good testimony in favour of the 
efficacy of a fish diet, when no better is to be had. 
As a diet, fish is only so far stimulating that it aug- 
ments the lymph rather than renews the blood. It 
is a puzzle to many gastronomic philosophers that 
fish was so constant a diet of the monkish orders. 
Its heating quality hardly suited men who were 
required to be ever coolly contemplative. But this 
matter I leave to the philosophers to determine. 
One of them, — that is, a gastronomic philosopher, — » 
M. Fayot, says, that if you would have a dinner 
composed altogether of fish, the meal should consist 
of “a turbot, a large salmon done in a court-bouzllon, 
flanked with aromatic herbs, and covered with a fresh 
winding-sheet of delicate seasoning. In such dinners, 
sea-fish have, undoubtedly, the first rank ; and among 
them the Cherbourg lobster, the shrimp of Honfleur, 
the crayfish of the Seine, and the smelts of that 
river's mouth, and numerous fresh-water fish mingle 
agreeably. Salmon and turbot should be done 
briskly ; drink afterward a glass of those old wines 
which give a digestive action to the stomach.” With 
M. Fayot, the turbot is “the king of fish, especially 
in Lent, as it is then of most majestic size. You may 
serve up salmon with as much ornament as you will, 
but a turbot asks for nothing but aristocratic sim- 
plicity. On the day after he makes his first appear- 
ance, it is quite another affair. It may be then 
disguised ; and the best manner of effecting this is, 
to dress him @ fa Béchamel,—a preparation thus 
called from the Marquis de Béchamel, who, in the 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 171 


reign of Louis XIV., for ever immortalised himself 
by this one vagout.” 

The « Almanach des Gourmands”’ speaks of a Lor- 
raine carp which was fed on bread and wine, and which 
was twice sent to the Paris market, in the care of a 
courier who travelled by the mail. It returned to its 
native waters in default of a purchaser willing to give 
thirty louis-d’ors for the monstrous delicacy. This 
was when fish dinners were much in vogue in Paris. 
There was then a ¢ad/e-d’héte for a fish repast only, 
held at a house profanely called, “The Name of 
Jesus.” This house stood in the Cloitre St. 
Jacques de |’Hopital, and every Wednesday and 
Friday it was crowded by the clergy, who dined mag- 
nificently on mazgre fare, for about 2s. a head. It 
is of one of these that Fayot recounts a pleasant 
story, the locality, however, of which was the Rocher 
de Cancale. A certain abbé dined there so copiously 
off salmon, that a fit of indigestion was the corise- 
quence. Some days afterward, when celebrating mass, 
the savoury memories of the fish flocked into his 
mind ; and he was heard to murmur, not the med culpd 
of the “ Confiteor,” but, as he quietly beat his breast, 
« Ah! that capital salmon! that capital salmon!” 

Of the more nutritive species of fish, turbot, cod, 
whiting, haddock, flounder, and sole are the least 
heating. Of these, the cod is the least easy of diges- 
tion, though turbot is quite as difficult of digestion 
when much lobster sauce is taken with it. The 
crimping of cod facilitates the digesting of the fish. 
Sole and whiting are easily digested. Salmon is 
nutritive, but it is oily, heating, and not very digest- 
ible; far less so than salmon trout. The favourite 


172 TABLE TRAITS 


parts of most of these fish are the least fit for 
weak stomachs, and the most trying to strong ones. 
Salmon, caught after the spawning season has com- 
menced, is almost poisonous ; and eels are objection- 
able at all seasons, from their excessive oiliness. 
Shell-fish generally may be put down as “ indigesti- 
ble,” particularly the under-boiled lobsters of the Lon- 
don market. The mussel is especially so; and these 
are not rendered innocuous by the removal of the 
beard, which is not more hurtful than any other part. 
Shell-fish, and, indeed, fish generally, affects the skin, 
by sympathy with the stomach. The effect is, some- | 
times, as if a poison had been generated: at others 
it very sensibly affects the odour of the cutaneous 
secretions. This effect was thoroughly understood 
when the Levitical priests, like those of Egypt, were 
prohibited from eating fish. The prohibition was 
based upon a just principle. 

The Egyptian and Levitical priests were more 
obedient to such prohibitions than St. Patrick, who 
once, overcome by hunger, helped himself to pork 
chops on a fast-day. An angel met him with the for- 
bidden cutlets in his hand; but the saint popped 
them into a pail of water, pattered an Ave-Mary over 
them, and our indulgent Lady heeded the appeal by 
turning them into a couple of respectable and ortho- 
dox-looking trout. The angel looked perplexed, and 
went away, with his index finger on the side of his 
nose. And see what came of it! In Ireland, meat 
dipped into water, and christened by the name of 
“St. Patrick’s Fish,” is commonly eaten there even 
on fast-days, and to the great regret of all those who 
eat greedily enough to acquire an indigestion. 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 173 


St. Patrick’s fish ought to have fetched as high a 
price as the four cod which formed the sole supply in 
Billingsgate market on one of the great frost-days 
in January, 1809; they were sold to one dealer for 
fourteen guineas. During the same month, salmon 
_ was sold at a guinea a pound! When fish is so high- 
priced, it is time to have done with it. So, exlevez! 
and let us to the succeeding courses of viands more 
substantial. While the fish is being removed, I will 
merely relate that it was the practice of Sir Joshua 
Reynolds, who gave plentiful dinners to admirable 
men, in his house in Leicester Square, always to 
choose his own fish, of which he was a capital judge. 
He was, on those occasions, ever the first visitor to 
the fish-shop still existing, in its primitive simplicity, 
in Coventry Street. He selected the best ; and later 
in the day, his niece, Miss Palmer, used to call, dis- 
pute the price, and pay for the fish. Sir Joshua’s 
table is said to have been too crowded, both as to 
guests and dishes, while there was scant attendance, 
and a difficulty of getting served; but the hilarity 
compensated for all. The guests enjoyed themselves 
with a vulgar delight that would have very much 
ruffled the dignity of such a pompous president at 
repasts as the bewigged, bepatched, and bepowdered 
Sir: Peter Lely. 

With the introduction of animal food is dated the 
era of professional cooks; and that era itself is set 
down by M. Soyer, a competent authority, as having 
commenced in the year of the world 1656. Other 
authorities give 2412 as the proper date, when 
Prometheus, or Forethought, as. his name implies, 
taught men the use of fire, and cooked an ox. But I 


174 TABLE TRAITS 


think that both dates and mythology are somewhat 
loose here, and that the period is easier of conjecture 
than of determination. Ceres killed the pig that 
devoured her corn, Bacchus the goat that nibbled at 
the tendrils of the vine, and Jupiter the ox that 
swallowed his sacred cakes ; and the animals slain by 
deities were roasted and eaten by men. Another 
tradition is, that roast meat originally smoked only 
on the altars of the gods, and that the priests lived 
on the pretended sacrifices, until some lean and 
greedy heretic, having wickedly pilfered the sacred 
viands, so improved under the diet, that his example. 
was promptly followed, and men took to animal food, 
in spite of the thunder of gods and the anathemas of 
priests. I need not say where there is better au- 
thority than all these pretty tales for man’s subduing 
to his use and service the beasts of the earth, the 
birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea. 

A rearer of cattle was, in the olden time, an aristo- 
crat in his way. The gods looked after his herds, 
and the law gave its protection where Olympian 
divinity so often proved worthless. _Bubona sat the 
watchful goddess of their fattening; and it was she 
who blessed the cabbages steeped in vinegar, the 
straw and wheat-bran, and the bruised barley, where- 
with the oxen were prepared for the cattle-show or 
the market. In the latter, the office of the Roman 
prefect fixed the selling price: the breeder could 
neither ask more nor take less’ than according to the 
official tariff. There was a singular custom at one 
time in Rome, which proves, however, that the seller 
had a voice in declaring the value of his stock. Pur- 
chaser and vendor simultaneously closed, and then 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 175 


suddenly opened, one of their hands, or some of the 
fingers. If the number of fingers on both sides was 
even, the vendor obtained the price which he had 
previously asked for his meat ; but if the number was 
uneven, the buyer received the viands for the sum 
he had just before tendered. This was as singular a 
custom as, and a more honest one than, that adopted 
by the first Dutch settlers in America. In their 
trading with the Indians a Dutchman’s fist was 
established as the standard of weight, with this 
understanding, that when a Dutchman was selling to 
an Indian his fist weighed a pound, but that it should 
only be half that weight when the Hollander was a 
purchaser ! 

The Roman markets were well supplied, and the 
pig seems to have been the national favourite. The 
emperors used to distribute thousands of pounds of 
pork to the poor, as on festive occasions we, less 
magnificently, divide among the needy our time- 
honoured English roast beef. There was even an 
edict against making sausages of anything but pork, 
—an edict which is much needed in some of our 
suburbs, where “pork sausages” are made of any- 
thing but pig, —and, after all, they could not be 
made of a dirtier animal. But the grave Romans 
strangely reverenced this unclean beast. Pliny places 
him only one degree below humanity; and certainly 
the porcine and human stomachs are very much 
alike! In the East, our ancient friend was a pariah, 
and his position among the unclean was fixed by a 
Jewish doctor, who said that, if ten measures of lep- 
rosy were flung into the world, nine of them would 
naturally fall to the execrated pig. There is no 


176 TABLE TRAITS 


doubt that the eating of the flesh of the pig in hot 
climates would bring on diseases in the human 
system akin to leprosy; and this fact may have 
tended ,to establish the unpopularity. of the animal 
throughout the East, and to account also for the pro- 
hibition. Galen, however, prescribed it as good food 
for people who worked hard; and there are modern 
practitioners who maintain that it is the most easily 
digested of all meats. It is certainly more easy of 
digestion than that respectable impostor, the boiled 
chicken, which used so cruelly to test, and defy, the 
feeble powers of invalids. | 

Pigs were fatted, both in Greece and Rome, until | 
they had attained nearly the bulk of the elephant. 
These fetched prices of the most “fancy” descrip- 
tion; and they were served up whole, with an entire 
Noah’s ark collection of smaller animals inside, by 
way of stuffing. A clever cook could so dress this 
meat as to make it have the flavour of any other 
viand; and the first culinary artistes of the day 
prided themselves on the preparation of a vagout 
composed of young pigs stifled before they were 
littered. The mother would have had no difficulty 
in performing this feat herself for her own young, if 
sows generally had been as huge as the one men- 
tioned by Varro, and which he says was so fat as to 
be incapable of movement, and to be unconscious 
that a mouse, with a young family, had settled in the 
folds of her fat, where they lived like mites in 
cheese. 

In another page, I have spoken of what were 
called “the sacred pigs and lambs.” Menzachmus, 
in Plautus, asks the price of the “porci, sacres, sin- 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 177 


cert.’ ‘ Sacres”’ was applied to all animals intended 
for immolation. The sinceri porct were the white and 
- spotless pigs offered to the Lares on behalf of the 
insane. The merchant who gives instruction, in the 
“ Pseudolus,”’ to his servant, as to the splendid re- 
past that is to be served up on his birthday, is very 
particular on the subject of pork; and he shows us 
what parts formed a dish that might tempt princes, 
—the ham, and the head: “ Pernam, callum, glan- 
dium, sumen, facito in aqua jaceant.”’ 

If men were not, anciently, fonder of beef than of 
pork, the reason, perhaps, was, that the ox was relig- 
iously reverenced, because of his use to man, whereas 
the pig was really of no value at all but for consump- 
tion. The excellence of the ox as food was, never- 
theless, very early ascertained, and acted on by some 
primitive people. The Jews were permitted to eat 
of that of which Abraham had offered a portion to 
angels ; and calf and ox were alike an enjoined food. 
The Greeks, too, devoured both with much com- 
placency, as they also did tripe, which was deemed a 
dainty fit for heroes. Indeed, for tripe there was an 
ancient and long-standing propensity among the early 
nations. It formed the chief dish at the banquets of 
men who met to celebrate the victory of mortals and 
gods over the sacrilegious Titans. 

The lamb and the kid have smoked upon divine 
altars and humble tables. The Greeks were espe- 
cially fond of both, and the Romans were like them 
in this respect; but the Egyptians religiously ab- 
stained from the kid; and more than one Eastern 
nation held, as of faith, that the lamb was more 
fitting as an offering to the gods than as a dish for 


178 TABLE TRAITS 


men. On the other hand, there were people who 
preferred the flesh of the ass, which was not an 
uncommon dish at Roman tables, where dogs, too, 
were served as a dainty ; for Hippocrates had recom- 
mended them as a refined food; and the Greeks 
swallowed the diet thus authoritatively described. 
The Romans, however, are said to have eaten the 
dog out of vengeance. The curs of the Capitol were 
sleeping, when the sacred and watchful geese saved 
it by their cackling; and thence arose, it is believed, 
the avenging appetite with which puppies, dressed 
like hares, were tossed into the stomachs of the un- 
forgiving Romans. They were also sacrificed to the 
dog-star. 

It is worthy of remark, that Mexico was partly 
conquered by aid of the pig. Cortez was in need of 
supplies of fresh meat on his march, and he took with 
him a large herd of swine, — sows as well as pigs, — 
“these animals being very suitable for a long jour- 
ney, on account of their endurance of fatigue, and 
because they multiply greatly.” The Indians, on 
most occasions, however, appear to have been able to 
have supplied him plentifully ; for we read, that at 
Campeche, for instance, in return for his presents, 
they placed before him partridges, turtle-doves, gos- 
lings, cocks, hares, stags, and other animals which 
were good to eat, and bread made from Indian corn, 
and fruits. It was, for all the world, like meeting a 
burglar at your dining-room door, and asking him to 
stay and take breakfast, before he went off with the 
plate ! 

When the uncle of Job entertained his heavenly 
visitors, the dish he placed before them was “roasted 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 179 


veal,” of a freshly killed calf. It was tender, because 
the muscular fibres had not had time to become stiff ; 
and its pleasant accompaniments were melted butter, 
milk, and meal-cakes. Veal is the national dish of 
Germany, where mutton is scarce, and calves abun- 
dant. It is poor food at any time; but the German 
veal is the most tasteless of meats. There, indeed, 
is applicable the smart saying of that ardent young 
experimentalist, who declared that eating veal was as 
insipid an enjoyment as kissing one’s sister! Car- 
dinal Zinzendorf used to denounce pork quite as 
strongly. He deemed pigs to have been of no use 
but for their blood, of which he himself used to make 
a bath for his legs, whenever he had the gout. 
Quixote Bowles, on the other hand, held pig, in any 
form, to be the divinest of meats, and the animal the 
happiest of all created things. With true Apician 
fervour, he would travel any distance to feast on the 
sight of a fatted porker; and a view of that prize pig — 
of Prince Albert’s, which was so uniformly huge that, 
at first sight, it was difficult to distinguish the head 
from the tail, would have made him swoon with 
gentle ecstasy. Bowles was an epicure in bacon ; 
and, whenever he went out to dinner, he took a piece 
of it, of his own curing, in his pocket, and requested 
the cook to dress it. The people of the Society 
Islands carry respect for pigs even beyond the com- 
pass of Bowles. They believe that there is a distinct 
heaven for the porcine souls; and this paradise of 
pigs is called by them “ Ofatuna.” The Polynesian 
pig is certainly a more highly favoured animal than 
his cousin in Ireland; for, in a Polynesian farm 
household, every pig has his proper name, as regu- 


180 TABLE TRAITS 


larly as every member of the family. Perhaps the 
strangest cross of pigs ever heard of, was that of 
Mr. Tinney’s famous breed for porkers, — Chinese, 
crossed by a half-African boar; the meat was said to 
be delicious. Finally, with respect to pigs, they are 
connected with a popular expletive, with which they 
have, in reality, nothing to do. “Please the pigs!” 
is shown, I think by Southey in his “Espriella,” to 
be a corruption of “Please the pyx!” The pyx is 
the receptacle which contains the consecrated wafer 
on Romish altars; and the exclamation is equal to 
«Please God!” The corruption is as curious a one 
as that of “tawdry,” from “tt “Audroyis saree 
Audrey’s fair, famous for the sale of frippery, — 
showy, cheap, and worthless. 

They who are half as particular about mutton as 
Quixote Bowles was about pork, would do well to 
remember, that sheep continue improving as long as 
their teeth remain sound, which is usually six years ; 
and that, at all events up to this time, the older the 
mutton, the finer the flavour. A spayed ewe, kept 
five years before she is fattened, is superior to any 
wether mutton. Doctor Paris, however, states that 
wedder mutton is in perfection at five years old, and 
ewe mutton at two years old; but he acknowledges — 
that the older is the more digestible. It is the 
glory of one locality, famous for its sheep, that the 
rot was never known to be caught upon the South 
Downs. It is further said, that a marsh, occasionally 
overflowed with salt water, was never known to rot 
sheep. A curious fact is stated by Young, in his 
“Survey of Sussex; namely, that Lord Egremont 
had, in his park, three large flocks of the Hereford, 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 181 


Southdown, and Dishley breeds; and that these 
three flocks kept themselves perfectly distinct, al- 
though each had as much opportunity of mixing with 
the others as they had with themselves. 

I have alluded, in another page, to a circum- 
stance first noticed, I believe, by Madame Dacier, — 
that there is no mention of boiled meat, as food, 
throughout Homer’s Ilad. The fair commentator is 
right; but “boiling” is, nevertheless, used by the 
poet as a simile. When (in the twenty-first book) 
Neptune applies his flames to check the swelling fury 
of Scamander : 


‘¢ The bubbling waters yield a hissing sound, 
As when the flames beneath a caldron rise, 
To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice. 
Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires 
The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires: 
So boils th’ imprison’d flood, forbid to flow, 
And, choked with vapours, feels his bottom glow!” 


This is not a very elegant version of the original, 
it must be confessed, albeit the translation is Pope’s. 
It is, however, the only reference to boiling to be 
found in Homer, and here the fat of the sacrifice 
boiled down is that of a pig. 


‘6 Kyloon Kedddpuevos aradorpepéos oiddo.o.”’ 


I do not know that I can take leave of mutton 
and the meats by doing them greater honour than by 
mentioning that Napoleon ate hastily of mutton be- 
fore he entered on the contest at Leipsic, and he 
lost the triumph of the bloody day through a fit of 
indigestion. 

Before the era of kitchen gardens, scurvy was one 


182 TABLE TRAITS 


of the processes by which the English population 
was kept down. Cabbages were not known here 
until the period of Henry VIII. ; and turnips are so 
comparatively new to some parts of England, that 
their introduction into the northern counties is hardly 
a century old. A diet exclusively of animal food is 
too highly stimulant for such a climate as ours; and 
an exclusively vegetable diet is far less injurious in 
its effects. No meat is so digestible as tender mut- 
ton. It has just that degree of consistency which 
the stomach requires. Beef is not less nutritious, 
but it is rather less easy of digestion, than mutton: 
much, however, depends upon the cooking, which 
process may, really not inaptly, be called the first 
stage of digestion. ‘The comparative indigestibility 
of lamb and veal arises from the meat being of a 
more stringy and ‘indivisible nature. Old laws or- 
dairied that butchers should expose no beef for sale, 
but of an animal that had been baited. The nature 
of the death rendered the flesh more tender. A 
coursed hare is thus more delicious eating than one 
that has been shot; and pigs whipped till they die, 
may be eaten with relish, even by young ladies who 
pronounce life intolerable. A little vinegar admin- 
istered to animals about to be killed, is said, also, to 
render the flesh less tough; and it is not unusual to 
give a spoonful of this acid to poultry, whose life is 
required for the immediate benefit of the consumer. 
Some carnivorous animals have been very expert at 
furnishing their own larder. Thus we read, that the 
eagles in Norway exhibit as much cunning in pro- 
curing their beef as can well be imagined ; and more, 
perhaps, than can well be believed. They dive into 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 183 


the sea, we are told, then roll in the sand, and after- 
ward destroy an ox by shaking the sand in his eyes, 
while they attack him. I think the French eagle 
tried a similar plan with the English bull, during the 
wars of the Empire, and very ineffectually. It dived 
into the sea, and rolled itself in the sand at Boulogne, 
and shook abundance of it across the Channel; but 
the English bull more quietly shook it off again from 
his mane, and the eagle turned to an easier quarry in 
Austria. Animals not carnivorous have sometimes 
been as expert. There have been horses, for in- 
stance, who have had their peculiar appetite also for 
meat. Some twenty years ago, we heard of one at 
- Brussels, which, fond of flesh generally, was particu- 
larly so of raw mutton, which it would greedily 
devour whenever it could get, as it sometimes did, to 
a butcher’s shop. 

The Jews, it is said, never ate poultry under their 
old dispensation; and French gastronomists assert 
that this species of food was expressly reserved to 
enrich the banquets of a more deserving people. 
About the merits of the people the poultry, and 
winged animals generally, would perhaps have an 
opinion of their own, were they capable of entertaining 
one; for nowhere, as in France, have those unfortu- 
nate races been so tortured, and merely in order to 
extract out of their anguish a little more exquisite 
enjoyment for the palled appetites of epicures. The 
turkey has, perhaps, the least suffered at the hands 
of the Gallic experimentalists, though he has not 
altogether escaped. The goose has been the most 
cruelly treated, especially in the case of ‘his being 
kept caged before a huge fire, and fed to repletion 


184 TABLE TRAITS 


until he dies, the Daniel Lambert of his species, of a 
diseased liver, which is the most delicious thing pos- 
sible in a pie. But it is ignoble treatment for the 
only bird which is said to be prescient of approach- 
ing earthquakes. The goose saved Rome, and was 
eaten in spite of his patriotism. He is skilled in 
natural philosophy, and his science does not save him 
from death and sage and onions. Nay, even a 
female sovereign of England could not hear of the 
defeat of the Spanish Armada without decreeing 
“death to the geese,” until the time comes when 
Mr. Macaulay’s Huron friend shall be standing on a 
fragment of Blackfriars’ Bridge, sketching the ruins 
of St. Paul’s. 

It must be allowed, however, that the scientific 
ladies of farmyards have improved upon the knowl- 
edge of their ancestresses. Formerly, of turkeys 
alone, full one-half that pierced the shell perished ; but 
now we rear more than fifteen out of twenty. I do 
not know, however, that that fact is at all consolatory 
to the turkey destined to be dined upon. 

Themistocles ordered his victory over Xerxes to be 
yearly commemorated by a cock-fight ; and the bird 
itself was eaten out of honour, as dogs in Rome were 
for reasons of vengeance. At Rome, the hen was 
the favourite bird; but hens were consumed in such 
quantities, that Fannius, the consul, issued a decree, 
prohibiting their being slain for food, during a cer- 
tain period; and, in the meantime, the Romans 
“invented the capon.” The duck was devoured 
medicinally, that is, on medical assurance that it was 
good diet for weak stomachs; and there were great 
sages who not only taught that duck, as a food, would 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 185 


maintain men in health, but that, if they were ill, the 
ample feeding thereon would soon restore them again. 
Mithridates, it is alleged, ate it as a counter-poison ; 
other people, of other times and places, simply be- 
cause they liked it. The goose was in as much 
favour as the duck with the digestion-gifted stomachs 
of the older races. It was the royal diet in Egypt, 
where the monarch did not, like Queen Elizabeth, 
recommend it to the people, but selfishly decreed that 
it was only to be served at his own table. Gigantic 
geese, with ultra-gigantic livers, were as much the 
delight of epicures in Rome, as the livers, if not the 
geese, are now the voluptas suprema of the epicure 
of France, and of countries subject to the French 
code of diet. A liver weighing as much as the rest 
of the animal without it, was a morceau, in Rome, to 
make a philosopher’s mouth water. This was not 
proof of a more depraved taste than that exhibited by 
a Christian Queen of France, who spent sixteen hun- 
dred francs in fattening three geese, the delicate 
livers of which alone Her Majesty intended to dine 
upon. The pigeon and guinea-hen never attained to 
such popularity as the goose and duck; while the 
turkey, and especially the truffled turkey-hen, has its 
value sufficiently pointed out by the saying of the 
gastronome, that there must be two at the eating of 
a truffled turkey, the eater and the turkey! The 
turkey, originally from the East, was slowly propa- 
gated in Europe, and the breed appears to have gradu- 
ally passed away, like the bustard in England. It 
was brought hither again from America, and its first 
reappearance is said to have been at the wedding- 
dinner of Charles IX. of France. 


186 TABLE TRAITS 


The turkey was not protected, as the peacock was 
by Alexander, by a decree denouncing death against 
whomsoever should kill this divine bird, with its 
devilish note. The decree did not affect Quintus 
Hortensius, who had one served up at the dinner 
which celebrated his accession to the office of 
Augur. Tiberius, however, preserved the peacock 
with great jealousy, and it was only rich breeders 
that could exhibit this bird at their banquets. 

A man who passes through Essex may see whole 
“herds”’ of geese and ducks in the fields there, fat- 
tening without thought of the future, and supremely 
happy in their want of reflection. These birds are 
“foreigners ;” at least nearly all of them are so. 
They are Irish by birth, but they are brought over 
by steam, in order to be perfected by an English edu- 
cation; and when the due state of perfection has 
been attained, they are, like many other young peo- 
ple partaking of the “duck” or the “goose,” trans- 
ferred to London, and “done for.” 

Some gastronomic enthusiasts, unable to wait for 
their favourite birds, have gone in search of them. 
This was the case with the oily Jesuit, Fabi, who so 
loved beccaficoes. “As soon as the cry of the bird 
was heard in the fields around Belley,’”’ says the 
author of the “ Physiologie du Gott,” “the general 
cry was, ‘The beccaficoes are come, we shall soon 
have Father Fabi among us.’ And never did he fail 
to arrive, with a friend, on the Ist of September. 
They came for the express purpose of regaling them- 
selves on beccaficoes, during the period of, the passage 
of the bird across the district. To every house they 
were invited in town, and they took their departure 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 187 


again about the 23d.” This good father died in our 
“slorious memory” year of 1688; and one of his 
choice bits of delirium was, that he had discovered 
the circulation of the blood before Harvey! 

And now do I not hear that gentleman-like person 
at the lower end of the table remark, that the circula- 
tion of the blood was a conceived idea long before 
Harvey ? You are quite right, my dear sir; and 
your remark is a very appropriate one, both as to 
time and theme, for the circulation of the blood is 
one of the results of cooking. As for preconception 
of the idea, it is sufficient for Harvey, that he demon- 
strated the fact. The doctors of ancient Roman 
days supposed that the blood came from the liver; 
and that, in passing through the vera cava and its 
branches, a considerable quantity of it turned about, 
and entered into the right cavity of the heart. What 
Harvey demonstrated was, that the blood flows from 
the heart into all parts of the body, by the arteries, 
from whence it is brought back to the heart again, 
by the veins. Well, sir, I know what you are about 
to remark, —that Paolo Sarpi, that pleasantest of 
table-companions, claimed to have made the demon- 
stration before Harvey. True, Sarpi used to say, 
that he did not dare publish his discovery, for dread 
of the Inquisition ; but that he confided it to brother 
Fabi da Aqua-pendente, who kept it close for the 
same reason, but told it in confidence to Harvey, who 
published it as his own. Well, sir, Sir George Ent 
exploded all that, by proving that Sarpi himself had 
first learned the fact from Harvey’s lips. The Italians 
have the same right in this case, as they have to their 
boast of having produced what old Ritson used to 


188 TABLE TRAITS 


style, “that thing you choose to call a poem, ‘ Para- 
dise Lost.’”” It was an invention or discovery at 
second-hand. 

What conceits Cowley has in his verses on Harvey! 
He makes the philosophical doctor pursue coy Nature 
through sap, and catch her at last in the human 
blood. He speaks, too, of the heart beating tuneful — 
marches to its vital heat; a conceit which Longfellow 
twisted into prettiness, when he said, that our 
‘muffled hearts were beating funeral marches to the 
grave.’ You will remember, sir, that Shakespeare 
makes Brutus say, that Portia was to him “dear as 
the drops that visit this sad heart.” Brutus himself 
would, perhaps, have said “liver ;”’ and, by the way, 
how very much to the same tune is the line in Gray’s 
‘ Bard,” wherein we find: 


‘‘ Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes.” 


But there is in tuneful Edmund, in our ever-glorious 
friend Spenser, a stanza which contains something 
that may pass for the circulation theory. You re- 
member, in the first canto of the Second Book, where 
the bleeding lady is found by the good Sir Guyon: 


“ Out of her goréd wound the cruel steel 
He lightly snatch’d, and did the flood-gates stop 
With his faire garment; then *gan softly feel 
Her feeble pulse, to prove if any drop 
Of living blood yet in her veynes did hop; 
Which when he felt to move, he hopéd faire 
To call back life to her forsaken shop. 
So well he did her deadly wounds repaire, 
That at the last shee ’gan to breathe out living aire.” 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 189 


And now, sir, I shall be happy to take a glass of 
wine with you, obsolete as that once honoured custom 
has become. And allow me to send you a slice of 
this venison. Ai little more of the fat? Certainly ; 
but, if you will take currant jelly with it, the sin be 
upon your own head. It has always been the ap- 
proved plan, you say. Ah, my dear sir, think what 
the approved plan was, for years, in the treatment of 
smallpox. That was not a gastronomic matter, you 
say? I am not so sure of that, for the patient, 
swathed in scarlet cloth, had to drink mulled port 
wine. But, on a question of diet, time and numbers, 
you think, may be taken for authority. Alas, my 
dear sir, did you ever try the once popular receipt of 
Apicius for a thick sauce to roasted chicken? Never! 
of course you have not ; for, in such case, your young 
widow would already have touched that pretty life- 
assurance we wot of. English tastes, you urge? 
Ah! in that case, if old rule be good rule, you must 
camp in Kensington Gardens, and eat acorns. In 
Germany, where venison is a national dish, the idea 
of currant jelly would ruin the digestion of a whole 
company. But I see you are incorrigible, and Will- 
iam is at your elbow with the doubtful sauce. 

Galen could not appreciate venison as the early 
Patriarchs and the Jewish people did, and as the 
Roman ladies did, who ate of it as a preserver of 
youth, as well as a lengthener of life. A roebuck of 
Melos would have brought tears of delight into the 
eyes of Diogenes. The deer was preferred to the 
roebuck at Rome; but the wild boar was also a 
favourite; and the Sicilian slave, chef to Servilius 
Rullus, cooked not less than three of different sizes 


190 TABLE TRAITS 


in one. The largest had baskets of dates suspended 
to its tusks, and a litter of young ones in pastry lying 
in the same dish. Within the first was a second, 
within the second a third, and within the third some 
small birds. Cicero, who was the guest for whom the 
dinner was got up, was as delighted with the culinary 
slave, as Lucullus had been a few days before, when 
he had eaten a dish of sows’ paps prepared by the 
same artist ; and the enraptured gastronome thought 
that all Olympus was dissolving in his mouth! 

A wild boar was at marriage-feasts what our wed- 
ding cakes are at those dreadful destroyers of time 
and digestion, — wedding-breakfasts, —an indispen- 
sable accompaniment. Caranus, the Macedonian, has 
the reputation of having exceeded all others in his 
nuptial magnificence; for, instead of one boar at his 
banquet, he had twenty. But I have seen more than 
that at many a breakfast in Britain. 

The ancient Britons abstained from the hare, like 
the Jews. Hippocrates held that, as a food, it thick- 
ened the blood, and kept people from sleep; but 
Galen—and such instances among the faculty are 
not uncommon— differed from his professional 
brother. People followed the advice of Galen; and 
though few, like Alexander Severus, could eat a 
whole hare at every repast, yet many ate as plenti- 
fully as they well could, accounting such diet profit- 
able both to health and good looks. 

Hares were nearly as injuriously abundant in 
Greece as rabbits were in Spain, where the latter 
animals are said to have once destroyed Tarragona, 
by undermining it in burrowing. Nay, more; the 
Balearic Isles were so overrun with them, that the 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING IgI 


inhabitants, afraid of being devoured, sent an embassy 
to Rome; and Augustus despatched a military force, 
which not only slaughtered the enemy, but ate the 
half of them. The more refined gluttons of Rome 
did not dine on the rabbit after this fashion. They 
only picked a little of the young taken alive from the 
slaughtered mother, or killed soon after birth. They 
were preferable to the rabbits of the Parisian gar- 
gottes, where fricassée de lapins is invariably made of 
cats. And these, perhaps, are as dainty eating as 
the hunch of the camel, or the feet of the elephant, 
— pettitoes for Brobdignagian lovers to sup upon. 

But we almost as villainously disguise our poultry. 
The latter, if not now, used — according to Darwin 
—to be fed for the London market, by mixing gin, 
and even opium, with their food, and keeping them 
in the dark; but “they must be killed as soon as 
they are fattened, or they become weak and ema- 
ciated, like human drunkards.” 

Game was almost as sacred to the Egyptian priests, 
as eggs to the sacerdotal gentlemen of some of the 
modern tribes of Africa. Under the head of “game,” 
we no longer admit the birds which, according to 
Belon, figured at the gastronomic tables of France in 
the sixteenth century. These were the crane, the 
crow, and the cormorant, the heron, the swan, the 
stork, and the bittern. The last-named bird was in 
high estimation, although the taste for it was con- 
fessedly an “acquired” one. The larger birds of 
prey were not then altogether despised by epicures, 
some of whom could sit down with an appetite to 
roast vulture, while they turned with loathing from 
the plump pheasant. 


192 TABLE TRAITS 


This Eastern bird, however, has, with this excep- 
tion, enjoyed a deserved reputation from the earliest 
ages. The Egyptian kings kept large numbers of 
them to grace their aviaries and their triumphs. The 
Greeks reared them for the less sentimental gratifi- 
cation of the stomach; and a simple Athenian repub- 
lican, when giving a banquet, prided himself on having 
on his board as many pheasants as there were guests 
invited. 

Pheasants’ brains were among the ingredients of 
the dish that Vitellius invented, and which he desig- 
nated by the name of “Shield of Minerva.” They 
were greedily eaten by many other .of the Ceesars ; 
and an offering of them to the statue of Caligula was 
deemed to be propitiatory of that very equivocal deity. 
The emperors generally esteemed them above par- 
tridges, which were trained for fighting, as well as 
fattened for eating. Roman epicures fixed on the 
breast as the most “eatable” portion of the gallant 
bird. The Greeks thought of it as we do of the wood- 
cock ; and with them the leg of the partridge was the 
part the most highly esteemed. At a Greek table 
would not have occurred the smart dialogue which is 
said to have taken place at an English dinner. “Shall 
I send you a leg or a wing?” said a carver to a guest 
he was about to help. “It is a matter of perfect in- 
difference to me,” was the reply; and it is not a 
courteous one. “It is a matter of equal indifference 
to me,” said the first speaker, at the same time resum- 
ing his own knife and fork, and going on with his 
dinner. 

Quails are variously said either to have recalled 
Hercules to life, or to have cured him of epilepsy. 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 193 


The Romans, however, rather feared them, as tend- 
ing to cause epileptic fits. Galen thought so; Aris- 
totle took a different view, and the Greeks devoured 
them as readily as though they had Aristotle’s 
especial authorisation; and the Romans were only 
slowly converted to the same way of thinking. 
Quails, like partridges and the game-cock, were long 
reared for the arena; and legislators thought that 
youth might learn courage from contemplating the 
contests of quails! 

The thrush was perhaps the most popular bird at 
delicate tables in Greece. They were kept from the 
young, lest the taste should give birth to permanent 
greediness ; but when a girl married, she was sure of 
a brace of thrushes, for her especial eating at the 
wedding-feast. They were still more popular in 
Rome, where patrician ladies reared thousands 
yearly for the market, and made a further profit by 
selling the manure for the land. The thrush aviary 
of Varro’s aunt was one of the sights of Rome, 
where men ruined themselves in procuring dishes 
composed of these birds for their guests. Greatly, 
however, as they abounded, there was occasionally 
a scarcity of them; for when the physician of 
Pompey prescribed a thrush, by way of exciting the 
wayward stomach of the wayward soldier to enjoy- 
ment, there was not one to be found for sale in all 
Rome. Lucullus, indeed, had scores of them; but 
Pompey, like many other obstinate people, chose 
rather to suffer than put himself under an obligation ; 
and he contrived to get well on other diet. 

The diet was, nevertheless, held to be exceedingly 
strengthening ; and blackbirds, also, were prescribed 


194 TABLE TRAITS 


as fitting food for weak digestions. It was perhaps 
for this reason that the celebrated — 


“Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie,” 


were the dainty dish set before the legendary and, 
presumedly, dyspeptic king! In later times, we have 
had as foolish ideas connected with them. The oil 
in which they were cooked was said to be good for 
sciatica, or hip-gout; and Vieillot says that freckles 
might be instantaneously removed from the skin, if 
— but ladies would never try what Vieillot recom- 
mends. | 

The blackbird was not imperially patronised. The 
stomachs of the gastronomic Czesars gave more 
greedy welcome to the flamingo. Caligula, Vitellius, 
and Heliogabalus ruined their digestions by vagowts 
of this bird, the tongues of which were converted 
into a stimulating sauce. Dampier ate the bird, 
when he could get nothing else; and thought the 
Czesars fools for doing so when they could get any- 
thing besides. The ancients, whether Greeks or 
Romans, showed more taste in eating beccaficoes, — 
that delicate little bird, all tender and succulent, the 
essence of the juice of the fruits (especially the fig) 
on which it feeds. The only thing to be compared 
with it is the ortolan. Had Heliogabalus confined 
himself to these more savoury birds, instead of 
‘acquiring indigestion on ostrich brains and flamin- 
goes, his name would have held a more respectable 
place in the annals of gastronomy. But master and 
people were alike barbarous in many of their tastes. 
Who now would think of killing turtle-doves for the 





THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 195 


sake of eating their legs “devilled?” And yet we 
eat the lark, that herald of the skies, and earliest 
chorister of the morn. We eat this ethereal bird 
with as little compunction as we do the savoury, yet 
unclean, of the earth, earthy, duck. And _ this 
thought reminds me of a story, for which I am in- 
debted to a friend, himself the most amiable of 
Amphitryons, the good things at whose table have 
ever wit, wisdom, mirth, and good-fellowship attend- 
ant, as aids to digestion.’ 


A LIGHT DINNER FOR TWO 


Many years ago, when railways were things un- 
dreamt of, and when the journeys from Oxford to the 
metropolis were inevitably performed on that goodly 
and pleasant highroad which is now dreary and for- 
lorn, a gentleman and his son, the latter newly flushed 
with college fame and university honours, rode forth 
over Magdalen Bridge and the Cherwell, purposing 
to reach London in a leisurely ride. A groom, their 
only attendant, carrying their scanty baggage with 
him on a good stout cob, had been sent on in ad- 
vance to order dinner at a well-known roadside hos- 
telry, where Oxford nags baited, and where their 
more adventurous riders frequently caroused, out of 
reach of any supervision by principals or pro-proctors. 

Pleasant is the spot, well approved by past genera- 
tions of freshmen, picturesque and charming to an 
eye content with rich fields, luxuriant meadows, and 
pretty streams, tributaries of the now adolescent 


* Henry Holden Frankum, Esq. 


196 ’ TABLE TRAITS 


Thames, whose waters had not at that date been 
polluted by barge or lighter at that point of its 
course. The neighbourhood is famous for its plump 
larks ; and whether in a savoury pudding, swimming 
with beefsteak gravy, or roasted, a round half-dozen 
together, on an iron skewer or a tiny spit, those little 
warblers furnished forth a pretty adjunct on a well- 
spread table, tempting to an appetite somewhat 
appeased by heavier and more substantial viands. 
Mine host at our roadside quarters had a cook who 
dressed them to a nicety; contriving to produce or 
develop a succulency and flavour which meaner prac- 
titioners would scarcely have deemed practicable. 
Now Martin, pursuant to his master’s instructions 
for securing a repast of ducks and the dainty lark, 
finding the landlord brought out from his shady 
porch by the clatter of the horse’s hoofs on the 
well-beaten road, announced the approaching arrival, 
and ordered dinner. ‘My master wishes to find a 
couple of larks and a dozen of ducks, well roasted, 
on his arrival at four o’clock.” ‘Did I understand 
you rightly, young man?” said Boniface. “Oh!” 
said the varlet, pettishly, “in Oxford no landlord 
needs twice telling ;’’ and betook himself to the 
stables, looking forward to the enjoyment of a 
tankard of good house-brewed ale,— no brewer's 
iniquitous mixture, — and the opportunity of shining 
with some lustre in the tap, or the kitchen, before 
country bumpkins, eager to listen to a man like 
himself, who had seen racing at Newmarket and 
Doncaster, and high life at Bath and Cheltenham. 
Meantime, his masters came leisurely along the road, 
nor thought of applying a spur, until the craving 


<a es 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 197 


bowels of the younger horseman, whose digestive 
organs were unimpaired by college theses and ex- 
aminations, suggested a lack of provender; and, 
their watches, when consulted, indicating the near 
approach of the dinner-hour, they broke off their 
chat, and soon drew rein at their place of temporary 
sojourn. 

Finding the cloth laid, and the busy waiter’s prep- 
arations nearly complete, they glanced with satisfac- 
tion at a table of somewhat unnecessary dimensions, 
considering the limited extent of the party, which 
our young Hellenist would have described as a 
“duality.” Just as our travellers were growing 
impatient, the landlord, having previously satisfied 
himself, by obsequious inquiry, that his guests were 
quite ready, reéntered, bearing a dish with bright 
cover, and heading as good a procession of domestics, 
each similarly laden, as the limited resources of his 
modest establishment admitted. The large number 
of dishes rather surprised the elder of the twain, 
whose mind was less absorbed by the suggestions of 
appetite ; and, having despatched the sole attendant 
left for a bottle of the best Madeira the cellar could 
supply, and a jug of that malt liquor for which the 
house had obtained some notoriety, he proceeded to 
look under the formidable range of covers. Seeing 
under the first a couple of ducks, he said, «‘Come, 
this is all right!” but finding the next, and the next, 
and still the next, but a repetition of the same, either 
with or without the odour of seasoning, he fairly 
stood aghast, when six couple of goodly ducks stood 
revealed before him. The young collegian’s mirth 
was great, his laugh hearty, at the climax of two 


198 TABLE TRAITS 


pretty little chubby larks which closed the line of 
dishes. Apple sauce and gravy, broccoli and pota- 
toes, stood sentries, flanking the array. Upon his 
ringing the bell with no gentle hand, the landlord 
himself stepped in from the passage, where he ap- 
peared to have awaited a summons; and, in answer 
to a question the reader may easily anticipate, replied 
that the servant’s order was precise, and that it was 
impatiently repeated upon his own hesitation in ac- 
cepting it. The respectability of the landlord, and 
the evident truthfulness of his manner, stayed all 
further questions. But the elder gentleman said 
firmly, that he should not pay for what had been so 
absurdly provided; alleging, that no two, or even 
three, persons could be found who would do justice 
to such provisions. The landlord, like Othello, “upon 
that hint spake ;” for he saw a faint chance of righting 
a somewhat difficult matter. “Oh, sir,” said he, “I 
think I could find a man hard by, who would not 
consider the supplies too much for his own appetite.”’ 
“Produce him,” said the guest, “and settle the 
point ; for, if you do, I will pay for the whole.” The 
anxious landlord said no more; but, bowing, left in 
search of a neighbouring cobbler, whose prowess with 
the knife and fork was preéminent in the vicinity. 
Meantime, our hungry travellers sat down to dinner 
with such good-will, that each of them disposed of 
one of the regiment; and, in a joint attack, a third 
fell mutilated, leaving but fragmentary relics. A 
latk apiece was a mere practical joke; and cheese, 
with celery, left nothing further wanting to appease 
those cravings which had prompted them to action. 
While these little matters were in progress, the land- 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 199 


lord had found the shoemaker, and told his story. 
“Well,” said Lapstone, “this is plaguy unlucky, for 
I’ve just had a gallon of broth! Such a famous 
chance, too ; for if there is anything I am particularly 
fond of, certainly ducks is a weak point, sir.” Boni- 
face, thinking it his only chance, urged him to try; 
and the man of bristles, nothing loath, consented. 
On being duly introduced, orders were given for 
setting-to on the spot, to ensure fair play, and defeat 
any supplementary aid, or a deposit in any other 
pocket, save that with which the savage in a nude 
state finds himself provided, —the stomach. While 
the travellers sipped their wine, and trifled with their 
dessert, the voracious cobbler fell heartily to work 
on the row of eight ducks before him: one having 
been sent down for the undeserving groom, whose 
blunder had proved a godsend to the man of leather. 
Wisely eschewing vegetables, and eating scantily of 
bread, the adsjecta membra of the doomed ducks 
rapidly yielded up their savoury integuments. But 
flesh is weak, and cobblers’ appetites are not wholly 
unappeasable ; so that while the fifth victim was 
under discussion, a stimulant, in the shape of “a 
little brandy,” was requested; and when the sixth 
was but slowly and more slowly disappearing, poor 
Lapstone, who began to think farther progress im- 
possible, was seen whispering to the landlord. The 
gentleman loudly demanded what the fellow was 
saying. “Sir,” said the landlord, promptly and cun- 
ningly, “he says, he wishes there were half a dozen 
more; for he is just beginning to enjoy them.” 
“Confound the rascal’s gluttony,” cried the travel- 
lers; “not a bit more shall he have. Put the re- 


200 TABLE TRAITS 


maining couple by for our supper; for we shall not 
leave your house till to-morrow,” —an arrangement 
affording much relief to the shoemaker, and entire 
satisfaction to the innkeeper. 


To return to the lark. It is worthy of notice, that 
London is annually supplied, from the country about 
Dunstable alone, with not less than four thousand 
dozen of these succulent songsters. At Leipsic, the 
excise on larks, for that single city, amounts to nearly 
4#1,000 sterling yearly. The larks of Dunstable and 
Leipsic are, I presume, ‘‘caught napping.” They 
are not, then, like the nightingale, who is said to sing 
all night, to keep herself awake, lest the slowworm 
should devour her. 

And this reminds me of a remark which I once 
heard made by one who disputed the fact, that every- 
thing had its use. Mr. Jerdan could not conjecture 
what use there could be in the cimex, that domes- 
tic “B flat,’ which may be found in old beds and 
old parchments. So my friend could not divine the 
utility of a slowworm, or of that unclean parasite, 
the “louse,” which, by the way, infects birds as well 
as dirty humanity, and even reaches these same as- 
piring larks. For the use of the slowworm I referred 
him to natural history ; for that of the pediculus, I 
_could only state that it is swallowed by some country- 
people as a cure for jaundice! At Hardenberg, in 
Sweden, it held a position of some importance. 
When a burgomaster had to be chosen, the eligible 
candidates sat with their beards upon the table, in 
the centre of which was placed a louse; and the one 
in whose beard he took cover was the magistrate for 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 201 


the ensuing year. After the ceremony, the company 
supped upon ducks, and sang like larks. 

The household of Job was of a hospitable cast. 
“Fis sons went and feasted in their houses, every 
one on his day” (which is explained as being the 
birthday) ; “and sent.and called for their three sisters 
to eat and drink with them.” We know what mate- 
rials the joyous family had to make a superb feast ; 
and doubtless he who presided thereat was as proud 
as the knight who, by virtue of triumphing in the 
tournament, alone had the right to carve the pea- 
cock which was placed before him — plumage, tail, 
and all —by the fairest “she” to be found in the 
vicinity. After all, the peacock was inferior to the 
succulent and sweet-throated thrush. The proper 
time for eating thrushes, and, indeed, much other 
of the small game of the bird species, is toward the 
end of November. The reason assigned by a French 
epicure is, that, after they have been fattened in the 
fields and vineyards, they then give a biting, bitter 
aroma to their flesh by feeding on juniper-berries. 
The Romans fed them on a paste made up of figs, 
wheat, and aromatic grains. The Roman epicures 
were as fond of them as the Marquis de Cussy was 
of red partridges, one of which he ate on the day of 
his death, and after a six months’ illness. It was his 
last act; and, in gastronomic annals, it is recorded, 
as Nelson’s calling for sealing-wax amid the thunders 
of Copenhagen, or his writing to Horatia before he 
went to meet death at Trafalgar, is noticed by the 
biographers of our naval heroes. Statistics, which 
are as pleasantly void of truth as poetry, generally 
speaking, set down the enormous total of nearly fifty- 


202 TABLE TRAITS 


two millions of francs as the sum expended yearly in 
France for fowls of all species. Taking the amount 
of population into consideration, this would prove 
that France is a more fowl-consuming nation than 
any other on the face of the globe. 

In a dietetic point of view, it would be well for 
weak stomachs to remember, that wild birds are more 
nutritious than their domesticated cousins, and more 
digestible. But the white breast or wing of a chicken 
is less heating than the flesh of winged game. 
Other game—such as venison, which is dark-col- 
oured, and contains a large proportion of fibrine. 
—produces highly stimulating chyle; and, conse- 
quently, the digestion is an easy and rapid affair for 
the stomach. But, though the whiter meats be 
detained longer in the stomach, furnish less stimu- 
lating chyle, and be suffered to run into acetous 
fermentation, their lesser stimulating quality may 
recommend them when the general system is not in 
want of a spur. Meats are wholesome, or otherwise, 
less with reference to themselves than to the con- 
sumer. ‘To assert a thing to be wholesome,” says 
Van Swieten, “ without a knowledge of the condition 
of the person for whom it is intended, is like a sailor 
pronouncing the wind to be fair, without knowing to 
what port the vessel is bound.” 

Cardinal Fesch would have made an exception in 
the case of “blackbirds.” His dinners at Lyons 
were reverenced for the excellence and variety of 
these dishes. The birds were sent to him weekly 
from Corsica; and they were said to incense half the 
archiepiscopal city. They were served with great 
form; and none who ate thereof ever forgot the 


. THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 203 


flavour which melted along his palate. The cardinal 
used to say that it was like swallowing paradise, and 
that the smell alone of his blackbirds was enough to 
revivify half the defunct in his diocese. 

Quite as rich a dish may be found in the pheasant 
which has been suspended by the tail, and which 
detaches himself from his caudine appendage, by way 
of intimation that he is ready. It is thus, we are 
told, that a pheasant hung up on Shrove Tuesday is 
susceptible of being spitted on Easter day! It is 
popularly said in France of the pheasant, that it only 
lacks something to be equal to the turkey! A wise 
saying, indeed ; but, the truth is, the two cannot be 
compared. Our own popular adage regarding the 
partridge and woodcock has far better grounds for 
what they assert : 


“‘ If the partridge had but the woodcock’s thigh, 
*T would be the best bird that ever did fly. 
If the woodcock had but the partridge’s breast, 
*T would be the best bird that ever was dress’d.” 


The partridge is much on the ground, the wood- 
cock ever on the wing; and these parts, and the 
immediate vicinity of them, acquire a muscular tough- | 
ness, not admired by epicures. 

The vegetarians may boast of a descent as ancient 
as that claimed by the Freemasons. In ancient days, 
if, indeed, flesh meat was not denounced, unmeas- 
ured honour was paid to vegetables. Monarchs ex- 
changed them as gifts, wise men and warriors supped 
on them after study and battle, chiefs of the noblest 
descent prepared them with their own hands for 
their own tables, agricultural chemists tended their 


204 TABLE TRAITS 


planting, and pious populations raised some of them 
to the rank of gods. 

The Licinian law enacted their use, while it re- 
stricted the consumption of meat; and the greatest 
families in Rome derived their names from them. 
Fabius was but General Bean, Cicero was Vice- 
Chancellor Pea, and the house of Lentulus took its 
appellation from the slow-growing lentil. 

The kitchen-garden of Henry VIII. was worse sup- 
plied than that of Charlemagne, who not only raised 
vegetables, but as Gustavus Vasa’s queen did, with 
her eggs and milk, made money by them. He was 
a royal market-gardener, and found more profit in his 
salads than he did in his sons. A salad, by the way, 
was so scarce an article during the early part of the 
last century, that George I. was obliged to send to 
Holland to procure a lettuce for his queen; and now 
lettuces are flung by cart-loads to the pigs. Aspara- 
gus and artichokes were strangers to us until a still 
later period. 

The bean has, from remote times, held a dis- 
tinguished place. Isidorus asserts that it was the 
first food used by man. Pythagoras held that human 
life was in it. By others the black spot was ac- 
counted typical of death; and the flamen of Jupiter 
would neither look upon it nor pronounce its name. 
The priests of Apollo, on the other hand, banqueted 
on a dish of beans at one of the festivals of their 
god. Those of A‘sculapius taught that the smell of 
beans in blossom was prejudicial to health; and 
farmers’ wives, in the days of Baucis and Philemon, 
maintained that hens reared on beans would never 


lay eggs. 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 205 


The “bean” was once the principal feature in the 
Twelfth-night cake; and he to whose share fell the 
piece containing the vegetable was king for the night. 
The last Twelfth Night observed with ancient strict- 
ness, at the Tuileries, was when Louis XVIII. was 
yet reigning. Among his guests was Louis Philippe, 
Duke of Orléans, who was lucky enough to draw the 
bean, and thereby became monarch for the nonce, 
‘«‘My cousin,” said Louis XVIII., “is king at last!” 
‘‘T will never accept such title,” answered the over- 


modest duke; “I acknowledge no other king in 
France but your Majesty, and will not usurp the 
name even in jest!’ Excellent man! he was at that 


very moment intriguing to tumble from his throne 
that very king, loyalty for whom he expressed with 
so much of unnecessary and enforced ceremony. 

The haricot blanc, or white kidney bean, deserves 
to be introduced more generally into our kitchens. 
There are various methods of dressing them ; but 
the best is to have them softened in the gravy of a 
leg of mutton; they are then a good substitute for 
potatoes. They are nearly as good, dressed with oil or 
butter; and Napoleon was exceedingly fond of them, 
dressed as a salad. Of course, we allude here to the © 
bean which, in full maturity, is taken from the pod, 
and eaten in winter. In England we eat the pod 
itself (in summer), split, and served with roast mut- 
ton and venison. The mature bean, however, makes 
an excellent dish. 

And, apropos to monarchs, it is to Alexander that 
we are indebted for the Indian “haricot;” and the 
vegetable had a fashion in Greece and Rome worthy 
of its distinguished introducer. But this fashion was 


206 TABLE TRAITS 


not a mere consequence; for gray peas were as uni- 
versally eaten. The people were so fond of these, 
that political aspirants bought votes of electors in ex- 
change for them. They formed the principal refresh- 
ment of the lower citizens at the circus and the 
theatre, where, instead of the modern cry of “ Oranges, 
biscuits, porter, and bill of the play!’ was to be 
heard that of “Peas! peas! ram peas! gray peas! 
and a programme of the beasts and actors!” 

Green peas were not known in France until the 
middle of the sixteenth century. They were grown, 
but people no more thought of eating them than we 
do the sweet pea. The gardener Michaux was born, 
and he it was who first sent green peas to a Christian 
table. 

When Alexander, son of Pyrrhus, wished to keep 
all the beans that grew in the Thesprotian Marsh for 
his own eating, the gods dried up the marsh, and 
beans could never be made to grow there again. So, 
when King Antigonus put a tax on the healing spring 
that flowed at Edessa, the waters disappeared; and 
the people were not, in either case, benefited. What 
lumbering avengers were those heathen deities ! 

The cabbage has had a singular destiny, — in one 
country an object of worship: in another, of con- 
tempt. ‘The Egyptians made of it a god; and it was 
the first dish they touched at their repasts. The 
Greeks and Romans took it as a remedy for the 
languor following inebriation. Cato said that in 
the cabbage was a panacea for the ills of man. Era- 
sistratus recommended it as a specific in paralysis; 
Hippocrates accounted it a sovereign remedy, boiled 
with salt, for the colic; and Athenian medical men 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 207 


prescribed it to young.nursing-mothers, who wished 
to see lusty babies lying in their arms. Diphilus pre- 
ferred the beet to the cabbage, both as food and as 
medicine, —in the latter case, as a vermifuge. The 
same physician extols mallows, not for fomentation, 
but as a good edible vegetable, appeasing hunger and 
curing the sore throat at the same time. The aspara- 
gus, aS we are accustomed to see it, has derogated 
from its ancient magnificence. The original “grass” 
was from twelve to twenty feet high; and a dish of 
them could only have been served to the Brobdigna- 
gians. Under the Romans, stems of asparagus were 
raised of three pounds’ weight, — heavy enough to 
knock down a slave in waiting with. The Greeks ate 
them of more moderate dimensions, or would have 
eat them, but that the publishing doctors of their day 
denounced asparagus as injurious to the sight. But 
then it was also said that a slice or two of boiled 
pumpkin would reinvigorate the sight which had 
been deteriorated by asparagus. “Do that as quickly 
as you should asparagus!”’ is a proverb descended to 
us from Augustus, and illustrative of the mode in 
which the vegetable was prepared for the table. 

The gourd does not figure at. our repasts as com- 
monly as it did in the east of Europe in mythological 
times, when it was greedily eaten, boiled hot, or 
preserved in pickle. The readers of Athenzus will 
remember, how a party of philosophers lost their 
temper, in a discussion as to whether the gourd was 
round, square, or oblong,—how a coarse-minded 
doctor interrupted the discussion by a very incon- 
gruous remark,—and how the venerable sage who 
was in the chair called the rude man to order, and 


208 TABLE TRAITS 


then bade the disputants proceed with their argu- 
ment. 

A still more favourite dish, at Athens, was turnips, 
from Thebes. Carrots, too, formed a distinguished 
dish at Greek and Roman tables. Purslain was 
rather honoured as a cure against poisons, whether 
in the blood by wounds, or in the stomach from 
beverage. I have heard it asserted in France, that if 
you briskly rub a glass with fingers which have been 
previously rubbed with purslain, or parsley, the glass 
will certainly break. I have tried the experiment, but 
only to find that the glass resisted the pretended 
charm. 

Broccoli was the favourite vegetable food of 
Drusus. Heate greedily thereof; and, as his father, 
Tiberius, was as fond of it as he, the master of the 
Roman world and his illustrious heir were constantly 
quarrelling, like two clowns, when a dish of broccoli 
stood between them. Artichokes grew less rapidly 
into aristocratic favour; the dictum of Galen was 
against them; and, for a long time, they were only 
used by drinkers, against headache, and by singers, 
to strengthen their voice. Pliny pronounced arti- 
chokes excellent food for poor people and donkeys! 
For nobler stomachs he preferred the cucumber, — 
the Nemesis of vegetables. But people were at issue 
touching the merits of the cucumber. Not so, re- 
garding the lettuce, which has been universally 
honoured. It was the most highly esteemed dish of 
the beautiful Adonis. It was prescribed as provoca- 
tive to sleep; and it cured Augustus of the malady 
which sits so heavily on the soul of Leopold of 
Belgium, — hypochondriasis. Science and rank eulo- 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 209 


gised the lettuce, and philosophy sanctioned the 
eulogy in the person of Aristoxenus, who not only 
grew lettuces as the pride of his garden, but irrigated 
them with wine, in order to increase their flavour. 
But we must not place too much trust in the 
stories either of sages or apothecaries. These pagans 
recommended the seductive, but indigestible, endive, 
as good against the headache, and young onions and 
honey as admirable preservers of health, when taken 
fasting ; but this was a prescription for rustic swains 
and nymphs, — the higher classes, in town or country, 
would hardly venture on it. And yet the mother of 
Apollo ate raw leeks, and loved them of gigantic di- 
mensions. For this reason, perhaps, was the leek 
accounted, not only as salubrious, but as a beautifier. 
The love for melons was derived, in similar fashion, 
probably, from Tiberius, who cared for them even 
more than he did for broccoli. The German Czesars 
inherited the taste of their Roman predecessor, carry- 
ing it, indeed, to excess; for more than one of them, 
as may be seen in another page, submitted to die after 
eating melons, rather than live by renouncing them. 
I have spoken of gigantic asparagus: the Jews had 
radishes that could vie with them, if it be true that a 
fox and cubs could burrow in the hollow of one, and 
that it was not uncommon to grow them of a hundred 
pounds in weight. It must have been such radishes 
as these that were employed by seditious mobs of 
old, as weapons, in insurrections. In such case, a 
rebellious people were always well victualled, and had 
peculiar facilities, not only to beat their adversaries, 
but to eat their own arms. The horseradish is, 
probably, a descendant of this gigantic ancestor. It 


210 TABLE TRAITS 


had, at one period, a gigantic reputation. Dipped in 
‘ poison, it rendered the draught innocuous, and, rubbed 
on the hands, it made an encounter with venomed 
serpents mere play. In short, it was celebrated as 
being a cure for every evil in life, —the only excep- 
tion being, that it destroyed the teeth. There was 
far more difference of opinion touching garlic, than 
there was touching the radish. The Egyptians dei- 
fied it, as they did the leek and the cabbage; the 
Greeks devoted it to Gehenna, —and to soldiers, 
sailors, and cocks that were not “game.’’ Medici- 
nally, it was held to be useful in many diseases, if the 
root used were originally sown when the moon was 
below the horizon. No one who had eaten of it, how- 
ever, could presume to enter the Temple of Cybele. 
Alphonso of Castile was as particular as this goddess ; 
and a knight of Castile, “detected as being guilty of 
garlic,” suffered banishment from the royal presence 
during an entire month. 

Parsley has fared better, both with gods and men. 
Hercules and Anacreon crowned themselves with it. 
It was worn both at joyous banquets and funeral 
feasts; and not only horses, but those who bestrode 
them, ate of the herb, in order to find the excitement 
to daring which otherwise lacked. In contrast with 
parsley stood the watercress, a plant honoured and 
eaten only by the Persians. It was, indeed, med- 
ically esteemed as curative of consumption, and, by 
placing it in the ears, of toothache. But the wits and 
Plutarch denounced its use in any case; and few 
cared to affect love for a plant which was popularly 
declared to have the power of twisting the noses of 
those who put it into their mouths! 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING CAG: 


Parsley was as popular in what may be called 
“classical”” times, as the asparagus has invariably 
been with a particular class in France. This vege- 
table has ever been, I know not wherefore, a favour- 
ite vegetable with the officials of the Gallican Church. 
One day, Monseigneur Courtois de Quincy, Bishop 
of Belley, was informed that an asparagus head had 
just pierced the soil in his Eminence’s kitchen-gar- 
den, and that it was worth looking at. Cardinal and 
convives rose from table, visited the spot and were 
lost in admiration at what they saw. Day by day 
the bishop watched the growth of the delicious giant. 
His mouth watered as he looked at it, and happy 
was he when the day arrived in which he might with 
his own hands take it from the ground. When he 
did so, he found, to his disappointment, that he held 
a wooden counterfeit, admirably turned and painted 
by the Canon Rosset, who was famous for his artistic 
abilities, and also for his practical jokes. The joke on 
this occasion was taken in good part, and the coun- 
terfeit asparagus was admitted to the honour of lying 
on the bishop’s table. | 

I have noticed that asparagus has been suggested 
as one of the substitutes for coffee. In this case, 
the seeds are taken from the berries, by drying the 
latter in an oven, and rubbing them on a sieve. 
When ground, the seeds make a full-flavoured coffee, 
not inferior, it is said, but that is doubtful, — to 
the best Mocha. 

It was the opinion of Pliny, that nature intended 
asparagus to grow wild, in order that all might eat 
thereof. That was esteemed the best which grew 
naturally on the mountainsides. The famous Ra- 


212 TABLE TRAITS 


venna asparagus was cultivated with such perfection, 
that three of them weighed a pound. Lobster sur- 
rounded with asparagus was a favourite dish; and 
the rapidity with which the latter should be cooked, 
is illustrated, as I have said, by a proverb: “ Velocius 
guam asparagt coguuntur!’’ There is a story told 
of an intrusive traveller forcing his company at sup- 
per on another wayfarer, before whom were placed 
an omelette and some asparagus. The intruder had 
not before seen any “grass,” and inquired what it 
was. ‘Oh, it is very well in its way,” said the other, 
“and we will divide both omelette and asparagus ;”’ 
and therewith, after carving the first, he cut the 
bunch in two, and gave the white ends to the impor- 
tunate visitor. The greatest indignation ever expe- 
rienced by Caréme, was once at hearing that some 
guests had eaten asparagus with one of his new 
entremets, and mixed it in their mouths with iced 
champagne. 

There is an opinion current in some parts of Eng- 
land, that they who eat of old parsnips that have been 
long in the ground invariably go mad; and on this 
account the root is called “ mad-nip.” On some such 
‘insane root,” it is said, the Indians, named by Gar- 
cilasso, whetted their appetites before they ate their 
dead parents. Such form of entombment was ac- 
counted most dignified and dutiful. If the defunct 
was lean, the children boiled their parent; but 
obesity was always honoured by roasting. Fathers 
and mothers were religiously picked to the very 
bones, and the bones themselves were then consigned 
to the earth. This, however, is not an exclusively 
Indian custom. The Indians only devoured their 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 213 


deceased parents; but I have seen, in Christian Eng- 
land, many a son devouring father and mother, too, 
during their lives, swallowing their very substance, 
and then, like the Indians, committing their bones to 
the bosom of a tender mother, — earth. 

Perhaps there is nothing, in the vegetable way, 
more insipid than parsnips; but these are sometimes 
as mischievous as insipid persons. This is the case, 
if the above-named tradition be worthy of credit, 
wherein we are told, that old parsnips are called 
“‘mad-nips,’ and that the maids who eat of them 
invariably become more like Salmacis than the youth 
she wooed, and are as much given to dancing as 
though they had been bitten by a tarantula. I fear 
the “mad-nip” is too much eaten in many of our 
rural districts, and perhaps by the acerba virgo of 
metropolitan towns and episcopal cities also. But 
let us look at our ancient friend the potato. 

It has been well said, that the first art in boiling 
a potato, is to prevent the boiling of the potato. 
“Upon the heat and flame of the distemper sprinkle 
cool patience ;”” for without patience, care, and atten- 
tion, — extreme vigilance being implied by the latter, 
— a potato will never came out of the pot triumphantly 
well boiled. 

The potato has been found in an indigenous state 
in Chili, on the mountains near Valparaiso and Men- 
doza; also near Montevideo, Lima, Quito, in Santa 
Fé da Bogota, and on the banks of the Orizaba, in 
Mexico. Cobbett cursed the root as being that of the 
ruin of Ireland, where it is said to have been first 
planted by Raleigh, on his estate at Youghal, near 
Cork. Its introduction into England is described as 


214 TABLE TRAITS 


the effect of accident, in consequence of the wreck- 
ing of a vessel on the coast of Lancashire, which had 
a quantity of this “ fruit ’’ on board. 

The common potato (solanum tuberosum) was 
probably first brought to Spain from Quito by the 
Spaniards, in the early part of the sixteenth century. 
In both of those countries the tubers are known by 
the designation of papas. In passing from Spain into 
Italy, it naturalised itself under the name of “the 
truffle.” In 1598, we hear of its arrival at Vienna, 
and thence spreading over Europe. It certainly was 
not known in North America in 1586, the period at 
which Raleigh’s colonists in Virginia are said to have 
sent it to England; and in the latter country it was 
not known until long after its introduction, as noticed 
above, into Ireland. In Gerard’s Herbal (1597) the 
Batata Virginiana, as it is called, to distinguish it 
from the Batata Edulis, or “sweet potato,” is de- 
scribed; and the author recommends the root, not 
for common food, but as “a delicate dish.” The 
sweet potato was the “delicate dish” at English 
tables long before the introduction of its honest 
cousin. We imported it from Spain and the Canaries, 
and in very considerable quantities. It enjoyed the 
reputation of possessing power to restore decayed 
vigour. This reputation has not escaped Shake- 
speare, who makes Falstaff exultingly remark, in a fit 
of pleasant excitement, that “it rains potatoes!” 
The Royal Society of England, in 1663, urgently 
recommended the extensive cultivation of the root as 
a resource against threatened famine ; but as late as 
the end of that century, a good hundred years after 
its first introduction, the writers on gardening con- 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 215 


tinued to treat its merits with a contemptuous indif- 
ference ; though one of them does “damn with faint 
praise,” by remarking, that “they are much used in 
Ireland and America as bread, and may be propagated 
with advantage to poor people.” As late as 17109, 
the potato was not deemed worthy of being named 
in the “ Complete Gardener ” of Loudon and Wise, and 
it was not till the middle of the last .century that it 
became generally used in Britain and North America. 
The “conservatives of gulosity” of that day con- 
tinued long to disparagingly describe it as “a root 
found in the New World, consisting of little knobs, 
held together by strings: if you boil it well, it can 
be eaten ; it may become an article of food; it will 
certainly do for hogs; and though it is rather flatu- 
lent and acid in the human stomach, perhaps, if you 
boil it with dates, it may serve to keep soul and body 
together, among those who can find nothing better.” 

Some sixty years since, the Dutch introduced the 
potato into Bengal. The produce was sold in Cal- 
cutta at 5s. a pound. The English tried to raise 
them, and all their plants grew like Jack’s bean-stalk, 
but lacked its strength. The Hollanders continually 
cut the swiftly growing plant, and so compelled it to 
produce its fruit beneath the ground. ‘The secret 
was as well worth knowing as that other touching 
potatoes during frost. The only precaution neces- 
sary is, to retain the potato in a perfectly dark place, 
for some days after the thaw has commenced. In 
America, where they are sometimes frozen as hard as 
stones, they rot if thawed in open day ; but if thawed 
in darkness, they do not rot, and lose very little of 
their natural odour and properties. So, at least, they 


216 TABLE TRAITS 


assert, who profess to have means of best knowing. 
The potato is said to have been first planted, in Eng- 
land, in the county of Lancashire, which was once as 
famous for the plant as Lithuania is for beet-root. 
It is not much more than a century since cabbages 
reached us from Holland. They were first planted 
in Dorsetshire, by the Ashleys; and I may add here 
what I have omitted in speaking of it in earlier times, 
namely, that the Athenians administered the juice of 
it in cases of slow parturition. Let me further add, 
that such terms as “cow-cabbage,” “horseradish,” 
“bull-rush,” and the like, do not imply any connec- 
tion between the article and the animal. The animal 
prefix is simply to signify unusual size. The prefix 
was commonly so applied by the ancients: hence the 
name of Alexander’s charger; and a not less familiar 
illustration is afforded us in the case of the “ horse- 
leech.” Cabbage used to have said of it what 
Lemery, physician of Louis XIV., more truly said of 
spinach ; namely, that “it stops coughing, allays the 
sharp humours of the breast, and keeps the body 
open.” Spinach, to be truly enjoyed, should never 
be eaten without liberal saturation of gravy; and 
French epicures say, “Do not forget the nutmeg.” 
This vegetable goes excellently with swine’s flesh in 
every shape, but especially ham, the stimulating 
flavour of which it strongly modifies. 

Rice, as an article of food, has something remark- 

able in it. Its cultivation destroys life; and when 
' the grain is eaten, its value as a supporter of strength 
is very uncertain. The cultivation of this production, 
where it does not destroy life, does destroy comfort, 
and slaves may be compelled, but freemen will not 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 217 


go voluntarily, to raise the ‘paddy crop.” In India, 
where the people of many districts depend upon it 
entirely as a chief article of food, famine is often the 
result, simply because the failure of one crop leaves 
the unenergetic people without any other present 
resource. 

And now, by way of a concluding word to those 
who read medicinally, I would say, on the best 
authority, first, that of the haricot bean I have nothing 
to add to what I have already stated. With regard 
to peas, they are, like many other things, most 
pleasant and wholesome when young. Old, they are 
the fathers of gaseous colic; and when swallowed 
with the additional tenacity of texture derived from 
being made into pudding, — why, then the unhappy 
consumer is a man to be pitied. Potatoes are best 
baked, or roasted lightly. In the latter case, they 
are scarcely less nutritious than bread ; but the potato 
must be in full health, and the cooking unexception- 
able. There is many a cook who could execute, to 
a charm, the /vzcandeau invented by Leo X., who has 
not the remotest idea of cooking a potato. When 
the Flemings sent us the carrot, in the reign of 
Elizabeth, it is a pity they could not have deprived 
it of its fibrine texture, the drawback to be set 
against its saccharine nutritiveness. As the Romans 
waxed strong upon the turnip, we may allow that it 
has some virtues, and that Charles the First’s secre- 
tary, Lord Townshend, did good service by reintro- 
ducing it to his countrymen. Like the Jerusalem 
artichoke, it requires a strong accompaniment of salt 
and pepper, to counteract its watery and flatulent 
influences. As for radishes, he who eats them is 


218 TABLE TRAITS 


tormenting his stomach with bad water, woody fibre, 
and acrid poison; and if his stomach resents such 
treatment, why, it most emphatically “serves him 
right.” As for cucumber, in the days of Evelyn, it 
was looked upon as only one remove from poison, 
and it had better be eaten and enjoyed with that 
opinion in memory. It is a pity that what is pleas- 
ant is not always what is proper. Thus the cucum- 
ber is attractive, but not nutritive; while the onions, 
at whose very name every man stands with his hand 
to his mouth, like a Persian in the act of ad-oration, 
is exceedingly nourishing and wholesome. But I can . 
never think of it, without remembering the story of 
the man who, having breakfasted early on bread and 
onions, entered an inn on a bitterly cold morning, 
with the remark, that for the last two hours he had 
had the wind in his teeth. ‘“ Had you?” said the 
unfortunate person who happened to be nearest to 
him ; “then, by Jove, the wind had the worst of it!” 

An onion is all very well as an ingredient in a 
sauce, but to make a meal of it! Well! it is on 
record that a dinner has been made, at which noth- 
ing was served but sauces. A dinner of sauces must 
have been quickly prepared; but, for quick prepara- 
tion, I know nothing that can vie with a feat accom- 
plished, on the 18th of March of the present year, at 
the Freemasons’ Tavern. The ‘“ Round-Catch-and- 
Canon Club” were to dine there at half-past five 
p.m. An hour previously, the active secretary, Mr. 
Francis, vicar choral of St. Paul’s, arrived, to see 
that “all was right.” Hefoundall wrong. Through 
some mistake, no company was expected ; and, there 
being no other dinners ordered for that day, the 


THE MATERIALS FOR DINING 219 


weary proprietors, and their chief “aids,” were enjoy- 
ing a little relaxation. Not only were the high 
priestesses of the kitchen “out,” but the sacred fires 
of the altars had followed their example. Great was 
the horror of the able counter-tenor secretary ; but 
the difficulty was triumphantly met by the accom- 
plished officers of the establishment; and, at six 
o'clock precisely, forty-two of us sat down to so per- 
fect a banquet, that the shade of Caréme might have 
contemplated it with a smile of unalloyed satisfaction. 
This house may boast of this tour de force for ever! 


Sauces 


THE donor of the sauce dinner, mentioned in the 
last page, was an eccentric old major. He invited 
three persons to partake of this unique repast. The 
soup consisted of gravy sauce, and oyster and lob- 
ster sauce were handed round instead of filet de sole. 
Then came the sirloin in guise of egg sauce, on the 
ground, I suppose, that an egg is proverbially “full 
of meat.” There was no pheasant, but there was 
bread sauce, to put his guests in mind of the flavour ; 
and if they had not plum-pudding, they had as much 
toward it as could be implied by brandy sauce; just 
as Heyne says, that Munich is the modern Athens in 
this far, —that if it has not the philosophers, it has 
the hemlock, and has Alcibiades’s dog, as a prepara- 
tion toward getting Alcibiades. The sauce-boats 
were emptied by the guests. The wine was well 
resorted to after each boat, and a little brandy settled 
the viand that was represented by the egg sauce. 
Half the guests, between the excess of lobster sauce 
and cognac, were all the worse for the banquet; but 
that proved rather the weakness of their stomachs, 
than non-excellence of the feast. It is said that the 
major, when alone in the evening, wound up with a 
rump-steak supper, —a process rather characteristic 


of the “old soldier ;” but I have heard, in a provin- 
220 


SAUCES 221 


cial town, of large parties to “tea,” followed by a 
snug family party, when the guests were all departed, 
to a hot supper, with the usual e¢ ceteras. But let 
us get back from the supper to the matter of season- 
ings. 7 

Seasonings may be said to form. an important item 
in the practice and results of cookery. The first, and 
most useful and natural, is salt. The ancients did 
not allow, at one time, of its use in sacrifices; but 
Homer called it “ divine,’ and Plutarch speaks of it 
as acceptable to the gods. Its value was not known 
to men until the Phoenicians, Selech and Misor, — 
so, at least, says an ancient legend, — taught man- 
kind the real worth of this production as a condi- 
ment, and thereby gave to meat increased flavour, 
and to the eaters of it increased health and improved 
digestions. 

The Roman soldiers received their pay in salarium, 
or “salt-money.” The Mexican rulers punished re- 
bellious provinces by interdicting the use of salt ; and 
Holland, some years since, cruelly took vengeance on 
the breakers of the law, by serving them with food 
without salt, during the term of their imprisonment. 
The poor wretches were almost devoured by worms, 
in consequence of this inhuman proceeding. 

Of course, the salt-money of the soldiery was, like 
the pin-money of a married lady, employed in other 
ways than those warranted by its appellation. For 
above three centuries, soldiers served gvazzs, and sup- 
ported themselves. Then came “salt-money,” or. 
salarium, in the shape of a couple of oboli daily to 
the foot, and a drachma to the cavalry. This was 
to the common men. The tribunes were, however, 


222 TABLE TRAITS 


exorbitantly paid, if Juvenal’s allusion may be trusted 
wherein he says that: 


“©. . . alter enim, quantum in legione Tribuni 
Accipiunt, donat Calvine vel Catiene ;” 


or, as it may be translated : 


«¢ Such sums as a full colonel’s coffers swell, 
He flings to Lola, or to Laura Bell!” 


But this must have been in very late times, previous 
to which frugality, modesty, and indifferent pay 
were ever the tribune’s share of the national virtues 
and their consequences lauded by Livy. The first 
Czesar doubled the salartum of the army, and de- 
creed that it should never be reduced. His succes- 
sors followed the example of increase. Augustus 
fixed the salt-money at ten asses a day, and by the 
time of Domitian it was considerably more than 
double that amount. From that period, the soldiery 
fed better, and fought worse than ever. Up to the 
time of the Empire they had been frugal livers, and 
were not above preparing the rations of corn allowed 
them with their own hands: some ground it in hand- 
mills, others pounded it between stones, and the 
hastily baked cakes were eaten contentedly upon the 
turf, with nothing better to wash them down than 
pure water, or, at best, posca, which was water mixed 
with vinegar, —and a very wholesome beverage, too, 
in hot weather. 

The Jewish dispensation, unlike that of the early 
Olympian theology, enforced the use of salt in all 


SAUCES 223 


sacrificial ceremonies. That of the Dead Sea was 
abundant; and Galen pronounced it as the most 
favourable for seasoning, and for promoting diges- 
tion. The Greeks learned to call it “divine,” and at 
last consecrated it to their gods. Spilling salt was 
accounted as unlucky in the days when “young 
Time counted his birthdays by the sun,” as in these 
modern times when the schoolmaster is abroad, — 
sometimes too much abroad. 

Ancus Martius was the first of the Roman kings 
who levied a duty on salt. He was not visited by 
the gods—as legends say other kings were who 
created such imposts — by some dire calamity. The 
bad example of Ancus Martius has continued over 
nearly the whole of Europe; and a slave cannot eat 
salt to his bread without paying tribute to the king. 

The word “salt” was often used for life itself. 
When Dordalus says to Toxilus, in the “ Persa,” 
“ Fodem mihi pretio sal prehibetur que tibi,’ —<“I 
get my salt at the same price as you do,” —he 
simply means that his manner of life is as good as 
that of Toxilus, and that a slave-merchant is as re- 
spectable as the very best-fed of slaves themselves. 
Catullus employs the word to denote beauty ; other 
poets use it to signify virtues of various kinds; and 
in Terence we find a man without salt to mean a 
man without sense. Plutarch was not wrong when 
he styled salt “the condiment of condiments.” I do 
not know that it has ever been used to point a prov- 
erb with a contemptuous meaning, except in Greece, 
where he who had nothing to dine upon was called a 
‘“ salt-licker.” Rome, where it was of such commer- 
cial importance, honoured it more by giving to 


224 TABLE TRAITS 


the road along which it was conveyed the name of 
“the Salarian Way.” 

There were people who never knew its use, as in 
Epeiros ; some who have steadily rejected it, as the 
Bathurst tribe in Australia. The Peruvians delighted 
in it, and ate it mixed with hot pepper and bitter 
herbs, as a sort of “sweetmeat.’”’ How sacred it is 
in Arabia, we all know; and, in illustration of it, I 
have heard of an Arab burglar accidentally letting 
his tongue come in contact, as he was plundering a 
house by night, with a piece of salt. He instantly 
deemed he had partaken of the owner’s hospitality, | 
and he departed without booty. Could Christian 
thieves be so influenced, we should salt our plate- 
baskets and cash-boxes nightly ! 

In Sicily a salt is spoken of that melts only in fire, 
and hardens in water. At Utica, one of the great 
salt suppliers of the ancient world, it lay about in 
such huge mounds, hardened by the sun and moon, 
that the pickaxe would scarcely penetrate it. In 
Arabia whole cities were once built of it, the blocks 
of salt being cemented by water. It is still procured 
with most difficulty in Abyssinia, where the clouds 
are supposed to deposit the crystal in sandy plains, 
of heat so furious, that it is only during one or two 
hours of the night that the seekers of it dare dash 
into the locality, and carry off, as hastily as possible, 
what they seek. It is procured far more pleasantly 
in those parts of Chili where it is found deposited on 
the leaves of plants. Off the warmer coasts of 
South America, and the still hotter shores of Africa, 
blocks weighing from one to two hundredweight 
have been picked up. Some writers tell us that 


SAUCES 226 


ah 


lakes are nothing more than salt plains in solution; 
and others, that salt plains are merely lakes con- 
gealed. However this may be, it is known that 
generally four gallons of water produce one of salt ; 
but there is great difference of result in various 
localities, some water yielding a sixth, other only 
a sixteenth. The deep sea-water is the most highly 
productive. There are various strange ingredients, 
too, used in different places to make the salt “grain” 
properly. White of egg, butter, ale, and even blood, 
are employed to produce the desired result. In its 
fossil or mineral state it is nowhere seen to such 
great advantage as in the mines of Williska, in 
Poland. I have seen those near Salzburg, in South- 
ern Austria; but these are mere salt-cellars, com- 
pared with the Polish mine, which forms a large sub- 
terranean city, has its streets, citizens, and coteries, 
and is an underground republic, many of the natives 
of which die without seeing a blade of grass, or a gleam 
of sunlight, upon the bosom of the upper earth. 
Finally, salt is the most natural stimulant for the 
digestive organs; but it should be remembered that 
too much of it is almost as bad as too little. The 
lowering of the price of salt, a consequence of the 
abolition of the duty, was beneficial to the poor, and 
ruinous to the worm-doctors. It is a singular pro- 
duction. In small quantities it is a stimulating 
manure; in large quantities it begets sterility. <A 
little of it accelerates putrefaction, while a large 
quantity prevents it. Further, it is to be remem- 
bered, —and I have mentioned the fact in another 
page, —that the salt in salted meat is not (whatever 
it may once have been) the table salt, the use of 


226 , TABLE TRAITS 


which is so favourable to digestion. In the meat it 
undergoes a chemical change, by which it deteriorates 
itself as well as the object to which it is applied. 
«Sweet salt”? was the name once given to sugar; - 
and in reference to this latter production, it may be 
safely averred, that its introduction worked a con- 
siderable change in society. And it appears to have 
been early added to that “significant luxury,” wheat. 
In Isaiah xliii. 24 there is an allusion made to it in 
these words: “Thou hast bought me no sweet cane 
with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat 
of sacrifices.” And again, in Jeremiah vi. 20: “To 
what purpose cometh there to me incense from 
Sheba, and sweet cane from a far country?” It 
would seem, however, that though the sweet cane 
may have been known, its uses were not very speedily 
appreciated, or, if they were, that they were for a 
long time forgotten. Thus, as late as the thirteenth 
century of our era, a writer speaks of a novel sort of 
salt that has been discovered, the flavour of which 
was sweet, and, as he suggests, might be found 
acceptable to sick persons, because of its soothing 
and cooling properties. “Honey out of the rock,” 
which was the sweetener most early noticed in Scrip- 
ture, fell into comparative disuse, after sugar had 
become a necessary of life, after being first a medi- 
cine, and then a luxury. The Spaniards received it 
from the Arabs, and familiarised it in Europe. Its 
first settlement beyond the Continent was in Madeira, 
and at length it found a congenial soil in the islands 
of the Western Indies. God gave the gift, but man 
has discovered how to abuse it to his own destruc- 
tion; and, from the sweet food offered by an angel, 


SAUCES 227 


he has distilled the fire-water, which slays like the 
pestilence. But to return, for a moment, from the 
sweets to the salts, and especially to the latter in 
the form of brine. | 

The Romans were fond of brine, — water in which 
bay-salt had been dissolved, —as a seasoning; and 
after dinner, those who could not guess the riddles 
that were put to them, were punished, like the refrac- 
tory gentlemen at the Nightingale Club, by being 
compelled to swallow a cupful, without drawing 
breath. Apicius invented a composition made up of 
salt, pepper, ginger, thyme, celery, rocket, and anise- 
seed, with lamoni, wild marjoram, holy thistle, 
spikenard, parsley, and hyssop, as a specific to be 
taken, after heavy dinners, against indigestion. They 
who could digest the remedy need not have been 
afraid of the dinner. 

That universal seasoning of the classical world, the 
garum, was originally a shrimp sauce; but it was 
subsequently made of the intestines of almost any 
fish, macerated in water, saturated with salt; and 
when symptoms of putrefaction began to appear, a 
little parsley and vinegar were added; and there was 
the famous gavum, of which the inventors were so 
proud, —and particularly of a garum which was 
prepared in Spain. Flesh instead of fish was occa- 
sionally used, with no difference in the process of 
preparation ; and it would be difficult to say which 
was the nastier. But, perhaps, if we could see the 
witchery of preparing any of our own flavouring 
sauces, we should be reluctant ever to allow a drop 
of the polluted mixture to pass our lips. There is a 
bliss in ignorance. 


228 TABLE TRAITS 


Pythagoras showed better taste in the science of 
seasonings, when he took to eating nothing but 
honey wherewith to flavour his bread. Hybla sounds 
sweet, the very word smells sweet, from its associ- 
ation with honey. Aristazeus, who is said to have 
discovered its: use, merited the patent of nobility, 
whereby he was declared to have descended from 
the gods; and the placing the honeycomb and its 
makers under the protection of Mellona, expressly 
made by men for this purpose, was a proof of the 
value in which they were held. Theophrastus placed 
sugar among the honeys, —the honey of reeds, —or 
the “salt of India,” as some strangely called it. The 
Greek physicians recommended its use, both as food 
and as flavourer. It was at one time as scarce as 
cinnamon, — that precious bark of which the phoenix 
made its nest, and which the Czsars monopolised. 
Cinnamon and cloves were not employed in seasoning 
until a comparatively modern period. The good 
people of earlier days preferred verjuice, in certain 
cases prescribed by Galen. They seemed to havea 
taste for acids: hence the admiration, both in Greece 
and Rome, for vinegar and pickles. Vinegar figured 
in the army statistics of Rome especially; but it 
once, at least, figured in a still more remarkable way 
in the statistics of the French army, in the time of 
Louis XIII., when the Duc de la Meilleraye, grand 
master of the artillery of France, put down 452,000 
as the sum expended by him in cooling cannons. 
How hot the war must have been, and at what a price 
the fever must have been maintained, when the 
merely refrigerating process cost so much! 

French epicures maintain that the pig was born to 


SAUCES 229 


be “ringed,” and that his mission was to rout at the 
foot of the yoke-elm trees, and turn up truffles! 
Pliny gravely looked upon the truffle as a prodigy 
sown by the thunderbolt in autumnal storms. How- 
ever this may be, all lovers of good things eat the 
truffle with a sort of devout ecstasy, in spite of 
the wide differences of opinion which exist among 
the faculty of guessers, as to whether the truffle be 
nutritious or poisonous, fit for food, or monster sire 
of indigestion. The fact is that they should be deli- 
cately dealt with, like mushrooms ; of which he who 
eats little is wise, and he who eats not of them at all 
is safe from blaming them for bringing on indigestion 
—as far as he is concerned. 

The truffle is thus elaborately, yet not verbosely, 
described by Archimagirus Soyer: “The truffle is a 
very remarkable vegetable, which, without stems, 
roots, or fibres, grows of itself, isolated in the bosom 
of the earth, absorbing the nutritive juice. Its form 
is round, more or less regular; its surface is smooth, 
or tuberculous; the colour, dark brown outside, 
brown, gray, or white within. Its tissue is formed 
of articulated filaments, between which are spheric 
vesicles, and in the interior are placed reproductive 
bodies, small brown spheres, called ‘truffinelles.’ 
Truffles vegetate to the depth of five or six inches 
in the high sandy soils of the southwest of France, 
Piedmont, etc. Their mode of vegetation and repro- 
duction is not known. (?) Dogs are trained to find 
them, as well as pigs, and boars also, who are very 
fond of them. They are eaten cooked under the 
ashes, or in wine and water. They are preserved 
when prepared in oil, which is soon impregnated with 


230 TABLE TRAITS 


their odour. Poultry is stuffed with them; also 
geese’s livers, pies, and cooked pork, besides numer- 
ous vagohis. They possess, as it is said, exciting 
virtues.” The latter, we suppose, is a paraphrase 
for the sentiment of “ Falstaff,’’ before cited, “It 
rains potatoes!’’ Shell-fish had the same reputation 
in the olden time. “ Tene marsupium,” says Italius 
to Olympio, in the “ Rudens:”’ 


“‘ Abi atque obsonia propera; sed lepidé volo 
Molliculas escas, ut ipsa mollicula est.” 


As for the mushroom, if it be not in itself deadly, 
it has been made the vehicle of death. Agrippina 
poisoned Claudius in one, and Nero, his successor, 
had a respect for this production ever after. Tibe- 
rius, in pagan, and Clement VII., in papal Rome, as 
well as Charles VI. of France, are also said to have 
been “approximately” killed by mushrooms. Seneca 
calls them “voluptuous poison,” and of this poison 
his countrymen ate heartily, and suffered dreadfully. 
The mushroom was not rendered harmless by the 
process of Nicander,—raising them under the 
shadow of a well-irrigated and richly manured fig- 
tree. 

One of the most perfect illustrations of “sauce,” 
in its popular sense, with which I am acquainted, is 
conveyed in the reply once given by a French curé 
to his bishop. It is a regulation made by canonical 
law, that a priest cannot keep a female servant to 
manage his household, unless she be of the assigned 
age of, at least, forty years. It once happened that 
a bishop dined with a curé, at whose house the prel- 


2 


SAUCES 231 


ate had arrived in the course of a visitation tour. 
On that occasion he found that they were waited on 
at dinner by two quietly pretty female attendants, of 
some twenty years each. When diocesan and subor- 
dinate were once more alone, the former remarked on 
the uncanonical condition of the household, and asked 
the curé if he were not aware that, by rule of church, 
he could maintain but one menagére, who must have 
attained, at least, forty years of age? “I am quite 
aware of it, monseigneur,” said the rubicund curé; 
“but, as you see, I prefer having my iver in 
two volumes!” 

With respect to the use of spices, it may ie safely 
said, that the less they are used, the better for the 
stomach. <A soupcon of them in certain preparations 
is not to be objected to; but it must be recollected 
that in most cases, however pleasant they may be to 
the palate, the apparent vigour which they give to 
the stomach is at the expense of the liver, and the 
reaction leaves the former in a worse condition than 
it was in before. 

The world probably never saw a second time such 
a trade in spices as that which was carried on of old 
between Canaan and Egypt. The Dutch and Am- 
boyna was a huckstering matter compared with it. 
Egypt sent Canaan her corn, wine, oil, and linen; 
and Canaan sent, in return, her spicery, balm, myrrh, 
precious woods, and minerals. The Ishmaelites were 
the carrying merchants; and, while each class of 
them had its especial article of commerce, they all 
dabbled a little in slave-dealing. Thus the men of 
the tribe that purchased Joseph dealt in spicery only, 
—a term including balm and myrrh. The Egyptian 


232 TABLE TRAITS 


demand for the article was enormous. At the period 
of the sale of Joseph, spicery was most extensively 
used, not only for the embalming of men, but of sacred 
animals. In after-times, this practice ceased to a 
great extent, on account of a large failure in the supply. 

There is something very characteristic of the 
“ancient nation” in the transaction of the brethren 
with respect to Joseph. The general proposal was 
to slay him; but it was Judah, first of his race, who, 
with a strong eye to business, exclaimed: “ What 
profit to slay our brother, and conceal his blood? 
Come, let us sell him to the Ismaelites.” The oppo- 
sition to fratricide, on the part of Judah, was not on 
the principle that it was a crime, but that it brought 
nothing. But, no sooner had he pointed out how 
they might get rid of the troublesome brother, and 
put money in their purses to boot, than the profligate 
kinsmen adopted the project with alacrity, preferring 
lucrative felony to downright profitless murder. Do 
I hear you remark, sir, that it has ever been thus 
with this rebellious Jewish people? Well, let us not 
be rash in assertions. Judah was a very mercenary 
fellow, no doubt; but it was better to sell a live 
brother into a slavery which gave him the chance of 
sitting at the table of Pharaoh Phiops, than to mur- 
der one for the mere sake of making money by the 
sale of the body, as was done by a Christian gentle- 
man of the name of Burke. 

There are some plants used in seasoning which 
have been esteemed for other virtues besides lending 
a fillip to the appetite. Others of these seasoning 
plants have acquired an evil reputation. Thus orach 
was said to cause pallor and dropsy. Rocket hada 


- SAUCES 223 


double use ; it not only was said to remove freckles, 
but an infusion of it in wine rendered the hide of a 
scourged convict insensible to the whip. Fennel 
was, unlike asparagus, held to be good for the sight. 
Dill, on the other hand, injured the eyes, while it 
strengthened the stomach. Anise-seed was in great 
favour with the medical philosophers, who prescribed 
it to be taken, fasting, in wine ; and hyssop wine was 
a specific for cutaneous eruptions, brought on by 
drinking wine of a stronger quality. Wild thyme 
cured the bite of serpents, —if the sufferer could 
only collect it in time; and pennyroyal was sovereign 
for indigestion. Rue cured the earache, and nullified 
poisons; for which latter purpose it was much used 
by Mithridates. Mint was gaily eaten, with many a 
joke, because it was said to have been originally 
a pretty girl, metamorphosed by Proserpine. The 
Romans, now and then, ate camomile at table, just 
as old country ladies, when tea was first introduced, 
and sent to them asa present, used to boil the leaves, 
and serve them at dinner, like spinach. Capers, in 
the olden time, were vulgar berries, and left for dem- 
ocratic digestion. “I once saw growing in Italy,” 
said an Irish traveller, fit to be “own correspondent ”’ 
to one of the morning papers, “the finest anchovies 
I ever beheld!” A listener naturally doubted the 
alleged fact; and the offended Irishman not only 
called him out, but shattered his knee-cap by a pistol- 
shot. As he was leaping about with intensity of 
pain, the Irishman’s second remarked to his principal, 
that he had made his adversary cut capers, at any 
rate. “Capers!” exclaimed the Hibernian, “capers! 
faith, that’s it. Sure, sir,’’ he added, advancing to 


234 TABLE TRAITS 


his antagonist, “ you were right ; it was not anchovies, 
but capers, that I saw growing. I beg pardon; don’t 
think any more about it.” Let us add, that, if the 
aristocratic ancients deeply declined capers, they were 
exceedingly fond of assafcetida, as a seasoning ingre- 
dient. Green ginger was also a popular condiment ; 
and it is commonly eaten in Madagascar at this day. 
I suppose that, in former times, Hull imported this 
production in large quantities, and that therefore one 
of her streets is called “the Land of Green Ginger.” 
The Romans gave wormwood wine to the charioteers, 
perhaps considering that the stomachic beverage 
would secure them from dizziness. 

I have mentioned above that Mithridates patronised 
rue as a nullifier of poisons. He was in the habit of 
swallowing poisons, as people in the summer swallow 
ices; and he was famous for inventing antidotes, to 
enable him to take them with impunity. One conse- 
quence is, that he has gained a sort of immortality 
in our pharmacopoeia; and “ Mithridate,” in phar- 
macy, is a compound medicine, in form of an electu- 
ary, serving as either a remedy or a preservative 
against poisons, being also accounted a cordial, 
opiate, sudorific, and alexipharmic. ‘ Mithridate” 
is, or rather, I suppose, was, one of the capital medi- 
cines in the apothecaries’ shops. The preparation of 
it, according to the direction of the college, is as 
follows ; and I request my readers to peruse it atten- 
- tively, and to get it by heart, in case of necessity 
supervening. Here is the facile recipe: “Take of 
cinnamon, fourteen drachms; of myrrh, eleven 
drachms; agaric, spikenard, ginger, saffron, seeds 
of treacle-mustard, frankincense, Chio turpentine, of 


SAUCES 235 


each ten drachms; camel’s hay, costus, Indian leaf, 
French lavender, long pepper, seeds of hartwort, 
juice of the rape of cistus, strained storax, opopanax, 
strained galbanum, balsam of Gilead, or in its stead, 
expressed oil of nutmegs, Russian castor, of each an 
ounce; poly-mountain, water-germander, the fruit of 
the balsam-tree, seeds of the carrot of Crete, bdellium 
strained, of each seven drachms; Celtic nard, gen- 
tian root, leaves of dittany of Crete, red roses, seed 
of Macedonian parsley, the lesser cardamon seeds 
freed from their husks, sweet fennel seeds, gum 
Arabic, opium strained, of each.five drachms; root 
of the sweet flag, root of wild valerian, anise-seed, 
sagapenum strained, of each three drachms; spignel, 
St. John’s-wort, juice of acacia, the bellies of scinks, 
of each two drachms and a half; of clarified honey, 
thrice the weight of all the rest: dissolve the opium 
first in a little wine, and then mix it with the honey 
made hot. In the meantime, melt together in an- 
other vessel, the galbanum, storax, turpentine, and 
the balsam of Gilead, or the expressed oil of nut- 
meg” (I have no doubt that one will do quite as well 
as the other; and this must be highly satisfactory for 
sufferers to know), “continually stirring them round, 
that they may not burn; and, as soon as these are 
melted, add to them the hot honey, first by spoon- 
fuls, and afterward’ more freely. Lastly, when this 
mixture is nearly cold, add by degrees the rest of the 
spices reduced to powder,’’—and, as the French 
quack used to say of his specific for the toothache, if 
it does you no harm, it will certainly do you no good. 
For my own part, I think the remedy worse than the 
disease; but a gentleman just poisoned may be of 


236 TABLE TRAITS 


another opinion; and I can only say, that if, with 
prussic acid knocking at his pylorus, he has leisure to 
wait till the above prescription is made up for him, — 
till the bellies of scinks and the camel’s hay are pro- 
cured, and till the ingredients are amalgamated “ by 
degrees,’ —he will, if he survive the poison, the 
waiting, and the remedy, have deserved to be called, 
kar é€oxnv, the “patient.” But here are the pastry 
and the fruits; and there are people who are given 
to believe that pastry and poison are not very wide 
asunder. 

When Murat wished to instigate the Italians to 
labour, he cut down their olive-trees. The Jews 
were forbidden to destroy fruit-trees, even in an 
enemy’s country ; and it used to be a law in France, 
and may be so still, that when an individual had re- 
ceived permission to cut down one of his trees, it was 
on condition of his planting two. The planters of 
vineyards enjoyed many privileges under the Jewish 
dispensation, and heathen governments placed both 
vineyards and orchards under the protection of the 
most graceful of their deities, and these deities were 
supposed to have an especial affection for particular 
trees. The Romans were skilled in forcing their 
fruits, which were produced at the third course, and 
not, as with the Greeks, at the second. 

Minerva is popularly said to have given birth to 
the olive, which was the emblem of Peace, the latter 
being naturally born of Wisdom. But the poisoned 
shafts of Hercules were made of the olive, perhaps 
to symbolise those armed neutralities which are gen- 
erally so fatal to powers with whom the neutrals 
affect to be at peace. The Autocrat of Russia, for 


SAUCES 237 


instance, has been dealing very largely in olive shafts, 
tipped with death. But the olive was known to the 
world before Wisdom, taking flesh, sprang in her 
bright panoply from the brain of her sire, and was 
called Minerva. From Judea the olive was taken 
into Greece; it was not planted within the territory 
of Rome until a later period; and, finally, in Spain it 
found a soil as favourable to cultivation as that of 
Decapolis, on holy ground. The Ancona olives were 
the most highly esteemed by the Roman patricians, 
at whose table they opened and closed the banquet. 
While the olives were greedily swallowed, the ex- 
pressed oil was distributed by way of largess to the 
people. It was declared to possess, if not a vital 
principle, something that stimulated and maintained 
vitality. Augustus, who was for ever whiningly hop- 
ing that he might die easily, and for ever chanting 
the prayer, “Euthanasia!’’ asked Pollio how he 
might best maintain his health and strength in old 
age. ‘You have nothing in the world to do,” said 
Pollio, “ but to drink an abundance of wine, and lubri- 
cate your imperial carcass with plenty of oil!” —a 
prescription which does not say much for the medical 
instruction of Pollio. Olive oil was so scarce at one 
time, in Europe, that in 817 the Council of Aix-la- 
Chapelle authorised the priests to manufacture anoint- 
ing oil from bacon. With regard to the fruit itself, 
it has not even yet undisputed possession of the 
public approval ; and I am very much of the opinion 
of the farmer who, having taken some at his land- 
lord’s table, expressed his indignation, on reaching 
home, that he had been served with gooseberries 
stewed in — brine. 


2338 TABLE TRAITS 


The palm-tree wine of the Hebrews inspired song, 
and thence, perhaps, did the palm itself pass into 
the possession of the mythological Muses. The 
palm-tree deserved to be a popular tree: its wood 
furnished man with a house, its branches with fuel ; 
its leaves afforded him garments, and a bed; and 
from them he could manufacture baskets, wherein 
to carry the fruit, bread, and cakes which he could 
make from its dates. I am only astonished that 
tradition has not made the palm, rather: than the 
beech or the oak, the original tree which first fed, 
clothed, and sheltered man. 

The cherry, compared with the palm, is but as 
a rustic beauty, compared with Cleopatra. Mithri- 
dates and Lucullus share the glory of making men 
acquainted with its fruit. From Cerasus, in Asia, 
Lucullus, no doubt, transplanted a cultivated fruit- 
tree, of a peculiarly fine sort; but the fruit itself was 
not unknown to the Romans long anterior to the 
time of Lucullus. It was slow in acquiring an esteem 
in Italy. The most extraordinary species of cherry 
with which I am acquainted, is the Australian cherry, 
which grows with the stone on the outside. But 
Nature, in Australia, is distinguished for her freaks. 
There the pears are made of wood, and salt-water 
fish abound in the fresh-water rivers! The nastiest 
species I know of, grows in the vicinity of, and some 
of them within, the cemetery of Pere-la-Chaise, at 

Paris. They are magnificent to the eye, and are not 
' ill-flavoured; but at the heart of each there is a 
maggot, as fat as one of Rubens’s Cupids, and, 
saving a slight bitterness, with as much of the taste 
of the cherry in him as a citizen of ripe Stilton has 


SAUCES 239 


of the cheese of which he is so lively a part. There 
is not a bad story told of an old and poor Spanish 
grandee, who used to put on spectacles when he sat 
down to his modest dinner of bread and cherries, in 
order that the fruit might gain, apparently, in mag- 
nitude. There was philosophy in this pleasant con- 
ceit! If the poor nobleman had had a dish of our 
cherries, from Kent, Berks, or Oxfordshire, he 
would not have stood in need of his merry delusion. 

How grateful to the palate is the Armenian apri- 
cot, blushing, in its precocity, like a young nymph; 
or the Persian peach, for a couple of which the 
Romans would give a score of pounds! The peach 
has an evil tradition with it. It is said to have been 
originally poisonous, but to have lost its deadliness 
when it was transplanted. Perhaps the peculiarly 
peachy odour of prussic acid may have contributed 
to give currency to a very long-lived, but entirely 
foundationless, tradition, — except, indeed, that poi- 
son may be extracted from the kernel; but so may 
arsenic from a Turkey carpet, and, indeed, from 
apple-pips also, as Sir Fitzroy Kelly told the jury, 
when endeavouring to save from the gallows a man 
who had murdered his mistress, in order that he 
might not put in peril his respectability! Perhaps 
the plum-tree, whether of Africa or Asia, from Egypt 
or Damascus, has been more fatal to health, if not to 
life, than any other of the stone-fruits. When Pliny 
complained of their superabundant propagation in 
Italy, he probably had in view the usual consequences 
of a very plentiful plum season. 

The apricot was not known in France till the 
eleventh century, and then they were accounted 


240 TABLE TRAITS 


dear at a farthing each. In the same century cher- 
ries used to appear at the royal table in May. To 
effect this, lime was laid at the roots of the tree, 
which was irrigated with warm water! Louis XIII. 
was fond of early fruit, and he had strawberries in 
March, and figs in June; this is more than the most 
expert fig-rearers in Sussex ever accomplished! The 
fig used to be esteemed as only inferior to that com- 
pound of luscious savours, the pine, —a fruit which, 
in the seventeenth century, was religiously patronised 
by the Jesuits. The same sort of sanction was given 
in the East to dates, though these were fashionable 
in Rome, after a basket of them had been sent from 
Jericho to Augustus. The Tunis dates are the best ; 
but indulgence in them is said to loosen the teeth, 
and produce scurvy. The Tunisian ladies, however, 
were as fond of them as the French ladies were of 
sweet citrons, before oranges were patronised by 
Louis XIV. The ladies used to carry them about, 
and occasionally suck them, the operation being con- 
sidered excellent to produce ruby lips. The citron 
was hardly less popular than the Reine Claude plum, 
which received its pretty name from the queen of 
Francis I., and daughter of Louis XII. I have 
noticed the Sussex fig: the white fig of the Channel 
Islands is also highly prized; and there is a tree at 
Hampton Court renowned for its fruit, but they who 
eat had better not too curiously inquire as to where 
the root of that productive tree penetrates, in order 
to accomplish its productiveness. In Sicily, they 
acupuncture the tree, and drop into it a little oil, 
and this is said to improve the flavour of the fruit. 
To what I have previously said of the peach, I may 


SAUCES 241 


add here what the Chinese say of it; namely, that it 
produces eternity of life, and prevents corruption 
until the end of the world. This species would be a 
popular one in England. 

Some writers assert that the apple was originally 
an African; but a negro with a red nose would be 
an anomaly; and the apple-tree does not look as if it 
came from the country of the children of the sun. 
Nevertheless, historians assert that it crossed the 
_ Mediterranean, and reached Normandy through 
Spain and France. The apple has been as productive 
of similes as of cider; and perhaps the prettiest is 
that of Jeremy Taylor, who says, in his sermon on 
the “ Marriage Ring,” that the “celibate, like the fly 
in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweet- 
ness; but sits alone, and is confined, and dies in 
singularity,’ —a figure of speech, by the way, not 
highly calculated to frighten a bachelor. But, after 
all, the sentiment of Jeremy Taylor is preferable to 
that of Gregory of Nazianzum, who calls a wife “an 
acquired evil; and, what is worse, one that cannot 
be put away.” However this may be, apples were 
once productive of matrimony in Wales. When the 
fruit-dealers there could not find a market, they pro- 
claimed a dance. The revellers paid entrance-money, 
and received apples in return. These meetings were 
called “apple lakings ;”’ and the fruit was sauce for 
many a consequent wedding-dinner. The finest 
used to be kept for accompaniment to the roast 
goose eaten on St. Crispin’s Day. Brides, in remote 
times, used to carry a love-apple in their bosoms; as 
fond thereof as the pitman’s wife of Northumberland 
was of the two lambs which she suckled, after their 


242 _ TABLE TRAITS 


dams had been killed in a storm. This was a more 
creditable affection than that of Marc Antony’s 
daughter for a lamprey, which she adorned with ear- 
rings, and which she exhibited at dinner; as Lord 
Erskine did the leeches which had cured him of 
some complaint, and which, enclosed in a bottle, he 
sent round with the wine. He called one “Cline”’ 
and the other “Home,” from the great surgeons of 
those names; and noble guests, before filling their 
glasses, gravely inspected the leeches, and then duly 
passed on the reptiles and the wine. 

This is what a Frenchman would have called a 
“triste platsanterte, a l’ Anglaise ;” and, by the way, 
I may remark, that Theophile de Garanciéres imputes 
the alleged melancholic nature of Englishmen to the 
great use which we make of sugar. Our sires used 
to make one curious use of sugar, undoubtedly ; 
namely, when they put it into the mouth of the 
dying, in order that their souls might pass away with 
less bitterness ! 

There is a German proverb which says, that, ‘it is - 
unadvisable to eat cherries with potentates.” In 
English this might mean, “Do not make too free 
with your betters.’ Few royal families, however, 
have given their inferiors more frequent opportu- 
nities to ‘eat cherries” with them, than that of 
Prussia. I am reminded of this while upon the sub- 
ject of pineapple, a slice of which was once given by 
Frederick William III. to a lad employed in the 
gardens at Sans Souci. ‘“ Here,” said the king, 
pleasantly, “eat, enjoy, and reflect while thou art 
eating. Now, what does it taste like?” The boy 
looked puzzled, as he munched the pine; thought of 


SAUCES 243 


all the most delightful things that had ever passed 
over his palate and clung to his memory, and, at last, 
_ with a satisfied expression, exclaimed, “I think, — 
yes, it does, — it tastes like sausage!” The courtiers 
laughed aloud; and the king, philosophising on the 
boy’s answer, said: “Well, every one has his own 
standard of taste, guiding his feelings and judgment, 
and each one believes himself to be right. One 
fancies he discovers in the pineapple the flavour of 
the melon ; another, of the pear; a third, the plum. 
‘Yon lad, in his sphere of tastes, finds therein his 
favourite food — the sausage.” 

The lad’s answer was as much food for mirth at 
Sans Souci, as was that of the Eton boy who was 
invited by Queen Adelaide to dine at Windsor Cas- 
tle, and who was honoured with a seat at her 
Majesty’s side. The boy was bashful, —the queen 
encouraging ; and, when the sweets were on the 
table, she kindly asked him what he would like to 
take. The Etonian’s eyes glanced hurriedly and 
nervously from dish to dish; pointing to one of 
which, he, in some agitation, exclaimed, ‘“ One of 
those twopenny tarts!” His young eye had recog- 
nised the favourite “tuck” he was in the habit of 
indulging in at the shop in Eton, and he asked for 
it according to the local phrase in fashion. Revert- 
ing to the lad who compared pineapple to German 
sausage, I may remark, that pineapple is most to 
be enjoyed when the weather is of that condition 
which made Sydney Smith once express a wish, that 
he could “slip out of his fat, and sit in his bones.” 

The quince is a native of Cydon, in Crete; and 
first Greece, and then Rome, Gaul, and Spain, 


244 TABLE TRAITS 


learned to love the fruit, and drink a quince wine, 
which was said to be excellent either as a stomachic 
or as a counter-poison. 

Galen recommended the pear as an astringent, 
which is more than a modern practitioner will do. 
St. Francis de Paul introduced one sort into France 
when he paid a medical visit to Louis XI. The 
species was named from the saint, “le bon Chrétien.” 

The apple may lay fair claim to antiquity of birth. 
The fruit has been diversely estimated by divers 
nations ; but the general favour has usually awaited 
it. In ancient times, both in Greece and Persia, it 
was the custom for a bridegroom at his nuptial feast 
to partake of a single apple, and of nothing else. 
The origin of the custom is said to arise from a 
decree issued by Solon. It was the sight of an apple 
that always put Vladislas, King of Poland, into fits. 
It is the best fruit that can be taken as an accom- 
paniment to wine; and the best sorts for such a 
purpose are the Ribstone Pippin and the Coster Pear- 
main. The golden apples stolen by Hercules were 
lemons; and they are suspected to have been the 
«Median apples” of Theophrastus. The Romans, 
at first, employed this Asiatic fruit only as a means 
for keeping moths out of garments; from this house- 
hold use it passed into the ancient pharmacopeeia, 
and it took rank among the counter-poisons. Its 
acknowledged reputation in scurvy and punch, if I 
may so express myself, was not made until a much 
later period of civilisation. The orange disputes with 
the lemon the honour of being the “ Hesperides 
apples,’ — which is a dispute of a very Hibernian 
character. China was probably its native place; and 


SAUCES 245 


the Portuguese oranges are merely descendants of the 
original “ Chinaman.” It was not known in France 
' until introduced there by the Constable de Bourbon. 
In England, an orange, stuck full of cloves, was a 
fitting New Year’s present from a lover, — being 
typical of warmth and sweetness, 

The fig-tree appears to have been, like the vine, 
very early used as a symbol of peace and plenty. It 
was a tree of Eden; yet the Athenians claimed it as 
a native tree, asserting, by way of proof, that it had 
been given them by Ceres,—not reflecting that 
Ceres may have brought it from a region farther 
east. If it be commonly employed in Scripture as a 
symbol, so an American poet has taken it, with its 
Scriptural allusions, to illustrate worldly marriages, 
of which he says, that — 


so, . . they are like unto 
Jeremiah’s figs: 

The good are very good indeed ; 
The bad, not fit for pigs.” 


The authorities of Attica were so fond of their figs, 
that they passed a law against the exportation of the 
fruit. The advocates of free trade in figs broke the 
law when they could do so with profit ; and the men 
who affected to be on friendly terms with them, in 
order to betray their proceedings to the magistrates, 
were called by a name which is now given to all 
fawning traitors, —they were styled sycophants, or 
“fig-declarers.” Even the philosophers in Greece 
became greedy in presence of figs; and with figs 
famished armies have been braced anew for the fight. 
The athlete ate of them before appearing in the 


246 TABLE TRAITS 


arena; and more than one invasion has been traced 
to the taste of the invader for figs. Medical men 
were divided in opinion as to the merits of this fruit. 
It was considered indigestible; but to remedy that, 
almonds were recommended to be eaten with it! The 
Romans, perhaps, were wiser, who took pepper with 
them, as we do with melon ; and Doctor Madden says 
that we should never eat figs at all, if we could only 
spend half an hour in Smyrna, and see them packed. 
So, as I have before said, a sight of the kitchen, just 
before dinner, would take away appetite; but as peo- 
ple do not commonly go to Smyrna, or sit with their 
cooks, why, figs and dinners will continue to be eaten. 
Modern professors have resembled ancient philoso- 
phers in an uncontrollable appetite for figs. Who 
has not heard af the famous Oxford fig, which, in its 
progress to luscious maturity, was protected by an 
inscription appended to it, conveying information 
to the effect that “this is the principal’s fig!” which 
a daring undergraduate one day devoured, and added 
insult to injury by changing the old placard for one 
on which was written, “A fig for the principal?” 
The felonious fig-stealer must have been more rapid 
in his sacrilege, than the poet Thomson was in his 
method of enjoying his own peaches in his garden at 
Kew. Attired in the loosest and dirtiest of morning- 
gowns, the author of the “ Castle of Indolence”’ used 
to watch his peaches ripening in the sun. When he 
saw one bursting with liquid promise, he was too lazy 
to take his unwashed hands from his well-worn 
pockets, and pluck the blushing treasure. No; 
“Jamie’’ simply sauntered up to it, contemplated it 
for a moment with a yawn, and finished his yawn by 


SAUCES 247 


biting a piece out of the fruit, — leaving the ghastly 
remains on the branch for wasps and birds to divide 
between them. 

As the Athenian rulers kept their figs, so did the 
Persian kings their walnuts, — and more selfishly ; 
for no one but their most sacred Majesties dared eat 
any; but one would think that even they would find 
it hard to digest all the walnuts that the country 
could produce. It is averred that walnuts entered 
largely into the Mithridatic recipe against poison. 
The modern recipe, called “‘ Mithridate,” I have given 
elsewhere ; but that which Pompey is said to have 
found in the palace of the king whom he had over- 
thrown, was as follows: “Pound, with care, two 
walnuts, two dried figs, twenty pounds of rue, anda 
grain of salt.’ Yes, we should say it must be taken 
cum grano. Howbeit, the royal physician goes on to 
say, “Swallow this mixture, — precipitate it with a 
little wine, —and you have nothing to fear from the 
action of the most active poison, for the space of 
four and twenty hours.” There would, probably, 
be less to fear after that time had elapsed than 
before. 

Nuts have not had respectability conferred on 
them, even by Nero, who was wont to go zucog. 
to the upper gallery of the theatre, and take delight 
in pelting them on the bald head of the przetor, who 
sat below. That official knew the offender, and was 
rewarded for bearing the attack good-humouredly ; 
and thence, perhaps, the proverb which characterises 
something falling, at once sudden and pleasant, by 
the term, “That’s nuts!” Of course, nuts were 
in fashion ; not so chestnuts, — these were as much 


248 TABLE TRAITS 


disliked by the patricians as the filbert and hazel 
were said, in France, to be hated by the sun. When 
they were ripening, the inhabitants used to issue 
forth at sunrise, and endeavour to frighten the lumi- 
nary out of the firmament, by making a horrid up- 
roar, with pots, pans, and kitchen utensils generally. 
And this was done under a Christian dispensation. 
The people were not heathen Chinese, trying to cure 
an eclipsed planet by attacking the dragon that was 
supposed to be swallowing it, with a tintamarre of 
caldron, kettle, tongs, and trivet. 

The Athenians were great hands at dumplings, 
consisting of fruit, covered with a light and per- 
fumed paste; and Rhodes, verifying the proverb, 
that “extremes meet,” was as famous for its ginger- 
bread as for its Colossus. The Roman wedding-cake 
was a simple mixture of sweet wine and flour; and 
the savzlum pie, made of flour, cheese, honey, and 
eggs, was a dish to make all sorts of guests jubilant. 
It was, in short, the national pie; and if there were 
a dish that was more popular, it was the artocreas, a 
huge mince pie, and the imperial pie of Verus, com- 
pounded of sow’s flank, pheasant, peacock, ham, and 
wild boar, all hashed together, and covered with 
crust. If emperors invented pies, so did philosophers 
create cakes; and the /zbuna of Cato was a real 
cheese-cake, that gave as much delight as any of the 
same author’s works in literature. Cheese was a 
favourite foundation for many of the Roman cakes ; 
but he was a bold man who added chalk, and so in- 
vented the placenta. Yet the placenta was eaten as 
readily as Charles XII. swallowed raspberry-tarts, 
Frederick II. Savoy cakes, or Marshal Saxe — who 


SAUCES 249 


loved pastry, pastry-cooks, and pastry-cooks’ daugh- 
ters —- macaroons, 

The Church honoured pastry, — or would so pious 
a king as St. Louis have raised the pastry-cooks to 
the dignity of a guild? The Abbey of St. Denis, 
long before this, stipulated with the tenant-farmers, 
that they should deliver a certain quantity of flour, 
to make pastry with; and, in some cases, in France, 
portions of the rent for lands was to be paid in puff 
pastry. This was at a time when fennel-root tooth- 
picks used to appear at table, thrust into the pre- 
served fruits, and every one was expected to help 
himself. Certainly our refined neighbours had some 
questionable customs. See what L’Etoile says 
(1596): “Les confitures séches et les massepains y 
étaient si peu épargnés que les dames et demoiselles 
étaient contraintes de s’en décharger sur les pages et 
laquis, auxquels on les baillait tout entiers.”’ 

Prince George of Denmark, the consort of Queen 
Anne, was never suspected of intermeddling with the 
foreign policy of the kingdom; but he was some- 
thing renowned for his appetite, and for the bent of 
it toward pastry. I think it is Archdeacon Coxe, in 
his “ Life of the Duke of Marlborough,” who says of 
this illustrious prince, that he would leave the battle- 
field in the very heat of action, and come into camp, 
with the hungry inquiry, if it were not yet dinner- 
time. This was something worse than drawing off 
the hounds, or unloading the fowling-pieces, because 
the “castle bell’? was peremptorily ringing to lunch- 
eon. Prince George was just the sort of man— 
fond of good living, and able to entertain others with 
the same predilection —who was likely to be sur- 


250 TABLE TRAITS 


rounded by parasites ; and the remembrance of this 
fact suggests that, while the wine is passing round, 
I may venture to give a sketch of that ancient and 
remarkable gentleman, ‘‘the parasite.’’ It is better 
than getting upon controversial subjects, which are 
productive of anything but unanimity. I remember 
one of the very pleasantest of ‘‘after-dinners” being 
marred by a guest, who, having slipped into the 
assertion that the Jews were the earliest of created 
people, was indiscreet enough to try to maintain 
what he had asserted, and weak enough to be angry 
at finding it summarily rejected. Why, Father Abra- 
ham himself was but a foreign heathen, from Ur of 
the Chaldees; and to claim primeval antiquity for 
the Jews is only as absurd as 1f one were to say, 
that Yankees and mint julep were anterior to Alfred’s 
cakes and the Anglo-Saxons. 

But many a hasty assertion has been simply the 
effect of an antagonism between imperfect chymifica- 
tion and the oppressed intellect. Mind and matter 
have much influence on each other; and, for the 
guidance of those interested in such questions, I may, 
while on the subject of dinner, notice, that from 
Doctor Beaumont’s “ Table,’ drawn out to show the 
mean time of digestion in the stomach (or chymifica- 
tion) of various articles of food, we learn that boiled 
tripe ranks first in amiable facility, being disposed of 
in about one hour. Venison steak requires some 
half-hour more. Boiled turkey and roast pig are 
classed together, as requiring two hours and twenty- 
five minutes for the process of digestion ; while roast 
turkey and hashed meat demand five minutes more. 
Fricasséed chicken is not more facile of digestion 


SAUCES 251 


than boiled salt beef, both requiring two hours and 
three-quarters. Boiled mutton, broiled beefsteak, 
and soft-boiled eggs, take three hours; while roast 
beef and old strong cheese trouble the stomach for 
some three hours and a half. Roast duck, and fowls, 
whether boiled or roasted, are alike slow of digestion : 
they require four hours as their mean time of chymi- 
fication, and are only exceeded by boiled cabbage, 
which requires full half an hour more. I borrow 
these details from an article in the Journal of Psy- 
chological Medicine, for January, 1851, a periodical 
edited by Dr. Forbes Winslow. I believe I do not 
err in attributing the article in question (“Mental 
Dietetics”) to the able pen of the accomplished edi- 
tor himself, than whom ‘no man has a better right to 
speak ex cathedrd on the subject in question. It will 
be seen, by the following extract from this article, 
that diet influences the mind as well as the body. 
“The nutritive particles of the food,’ says Doctor 
Winslow, “being in the form of chyle, mixed with the 
blood, and supplying it with the elements which 
enable it to repair the waste of the animal system, it 
is obvious that the health, both of the body and of 
the mind, must depend on the quality and quantity 
of the vital stream. According to Lecanu, the pro- 
portion of the red globules of the blood may be 
regarded as a measure of vital energy ; for the action 
of the serum and of the globules on the nervous sys- 
tem is very different. The former scarcely excites 
it, the latter do so powerfully. Now those causes 
which tend to increase the mass of blood, tend also 
to increase the proportion of red globules; whilst 
those which tend to diminish the mass of blood, tend 


252 TABLE TRAITS 


to diminish the proportion of the globules. The 
result is obvious, A large quantity of stimulating ani- 
mal food, without a proper amount of exercise, aug- 
ments the number of the red globules, and diminishes 
the aqueous part of the blood. Hence the nervous 
system becomes oppressed, the brain frequently con- 
gested, and the intellectual faculties no longer enjoy 
their wonted activity. In the meantime, the system 
endeavours to relieve itself by throwing a counter- 
stimulus upon certain other organs, the functions of 
which are morbidly increased. The blood, in such 
cases, becomes preternaturally thickened, and _ its. 
coagulum unusually firm. On the other hand, if the 
system be not supplied with the requisite amount of 
nutrition, the blood becomes, by the loss of its red 
corpuscles, impoverished in quality, and, in cases of 
extreme abstinence, diminished in quantity. In these 
cases the powers of the mind soon become enfeebled.” 

But we will pass from these scientific matters, to 
seek the company of one who, if ignorant of science, 
was generally a great man in the profession of his 
peculiar art, — the ancient parasite. 


The Parasite 


“ Pity those whose flanks grow great, 
Swell’d by the lard of others’ meat.” 
— HERRICK. 


PaRA, “near,” and sztos, “corn,” pretty well ex- 
plain what the Greeks understood by the word 
“parasite.” As the worthless weed among the 
wheat, so was this classical Skimpole in the field of 
society. As the weed hung for support to the sub- 
stance that promised to yield it, so did the parasite 
cling to the side of those who kept good tables, and 
lacked wit to enliven them. 

The parasite was too delicate a fellow to allow of 
invidious distinctions. He supped or dined wherever 
he was invited, and at marriage-feasts waited for no 
invitation at all. There he was in his glory. He 
was the cracker of jokes, and of the heads of those 
who did not agree with every word that fell from the 
lips of the Amphitryon of the hour. He usually, 
however, got his own skull bruised by the watch, 
when staggering home through the dark, “full of the 
god,” and without a slave to direct his steps. But 
it was only with the morning that he became con- 
scious at once of pain from the bruises, and the 
necessity of providing, at the cost of others, for his 
own breakfast. 

These professional “livers out” were, however, 

253 


254 TABLE TRAITS 


not always unattended. The victims whom they 
flattered sometimes lent them a slave. Their ward- 
robe seldom extended beyond two suits, one for the 
public, and one for wear at home. They looked 
abroad for dupes, just as our ring-droppers used to 
do, and for the same purpose. The parasite gener- 
ally attached himself to the first simple-looking per- 
sonage he encountered, provided he bore with him 
proofs of being a man who could afford to live well. 
Simplex usually swallowed with complacency all the 
three-piled flattery with which the parasite troubled 
him ; and if he were expecting friends to dinner, the 
gastronome, who wanted one, was probably invited. 
But there was always an understanding, that, in 
return for the invitation, he was to maintain, for the 
diversion of the company, a continual fire of jokes. 
If he proved but a sorry jester, he was promptly 
scourged into the street, down which he ran, nothing 
abashed, to look for hearers whom indifferent jests 
could move to ready laughter. 

The parasite looked upon the fortune and table of 
others as a property which was properly to be held 
incommon. M. Prudhon really started a parasitical 
precept, when he tried to establish that what be- 
longed to one man belonged to a great many others 
besides. But if, as regarded his own share in prop- 
erty that was not his own, the parasite was so fara 
Communist, he was the most charitable of fellows, 
his earnest prayer being that none of his patrons 
might ever fall into such distress as to be unable to 
give good dinners. The dinner-table was his arena. 
If he got but one meal a day, he consumed enough 
thereat to satisfy half a dozen appetites; and, as he 


THE PARASITE 255 


ate, it was matter of perfect indifference to him 
whether he was called upon to find wit for the 
guests, or to be the butt of their own. You might 
buffet him till he was senseless, provided the blows 
were afterward paid for in brimming glasses. 

He was always first at a feast; and as he was as 
common an object at a feast as the sauce itself, so 
‘“sauce”’ was the common name for a parasite. There 
he was not only wit, butt, and bully, but porter also ; 
and his office was not merely to knock down the 
drunken, but to carry them out when incapable of 
performing that office for themselves. The parasites 
had a dash, too, of the “bravo” in their character, 
and let themselves out for a dozen other purposes 
besides dining. The stronger-bodied and the braver- 
souled let out their strength. “Do you want a 
wrestler?” says the parasite, in Antiphzeus, “here 
I am, an Antzeus. If you want a door forced, I have 
a head like a ram to do it; and I can scale a wall 
like Capaneus. Telamon was not stronger than my 
wrist ; and I can wreathe into the ear of beauty like 
smoke.” Some of these Bobadils are even said to 
have ventured into battle, and to have especially 
distinguished themselves in the commissariat depart- 
ment ! 

Others boasted of their powers of fasting, — always 
provided good pay assured them of compensating 
banquets at the end of their service. ‘I can live on 
as little as Tithymallus,” says one; and the individual 
in question is said to have supported life on eight 
lupines a day, —a hint to poor-law commissioners. 
Another makes a merit of being as thin as Philip- 
pides, who, like Hood’s friend, was so thin, that, 


256 TABLE TRAITS 


when he stood sideways, you could not see him! 
The merits of a third are summed up by him in 
saying, that he can live on water, like a frog; on 
vegetables, like a caterpillar ; can go without bathing, 
like Dirtiness herself, if there be such a deity; can 
live in winter with no roof but the sky, like a bird; 
can support heat, and sing beneath a noonday sun, 
like a grasshopper ; do without oil, like the dust ; walk 
barefooted from break of day, like the crane; and 
keep wide-awake all night, like the owl. 

Of such a profession the parasite was proud, and 
even declared that its origin was divine; and that 
Jupiter Amicalis (Zets 6 Pidws) was its patron saint! 
As Jove entered where he chose, ate and drank of 
what most took his fancy, and, after creating an 
atmosphere of enjoyment, retired without having any- 
thing to pay; just so, it was argued, was it with the 
parasite. In Attica, parasites were admitted to the 
commemorative banquets that followed the sacrifices 
to Hercules; proof enough that they were accounted 
as being of the same kidney as heroes. In later 
times came degenerate men and manners; and then, 
instead of honourable men sitting with gods and 
heroes, the office of parasite was so degraded, that 
none but the hungry wits exercised it. Flattery to 
mortals then took the place of praise to gods. The 
parasite was ready to laud every act of the master of 
the feast, — 


“. . . laudare paratus 
Si bene ructavit, si rectum minxit amicus,” 


and to eulogise a great number of other acts besides, 
as may be found noted by those who are very curious, 


THE PARASITE 207 


and not overnice, in the fragments of Diodorus of 
Sinope. 

The fellows were witty, too, however degraded. 
When Cheerephon had, uninvited, slipped into a 
vacant position at a wedding-dinner, the gyne- 
conomes, as inspectors of the feast, counting the 
guests, came upon him last, and said, “‘ You are the 
thirty-first: it is against the law; you must with- 
draw.’ “I do not dispute the law,” said the para- . 
site, “but I object to your manner of counting. 
Begin the numbering by me, and your conclusions 
will be indisputable.” 

The parasite, Philoxenus, happened to be supping 
with a host who gave his guests nothing but black 
bread. “This is not a loaf, but a spectre,’’ whispered 
the professional wit: “if we eat any more of it, we 
shall soon be in the shades.” 

There was more wit in Bithys, the parasite of the 
avaricious King Lysimachus, who one day, at dinner, 
flung a wooden scorpion at the flatterer. The latter 
affected great fright, but afterward remarked, “I will, 
in my turn, terrify you, O king; be good enough to 
give me a talent.”’ 

Clisophus, another of this strange brotherhood, 
either fooled or flattered King Philip to the very top 
of his bent. The king having lost an eye, Clisophus 
always sat down to dinner in his presence with a 
bandage over one of his own; and when the mon- 
arch limped, from a wound in the leg, Clisophus went 
“halting at his side;” and if, by chance, an ill odour 
affected the royal nostrils, Clisophus wore, all day 
long, a grimace upon his features, as if he were sick 
with disgust. However absurd this may appear, the 


258 TABLE TRAITS 


parasites of Louis XIV. flattered him as grossly as 
the original practitioners did the early and heathen 
kings. People shaved their heads and wore periwigs, 
because the monarch, having little hair of his own, 
wore long locks cropped from other heads. So, 
when once at dinner he complained of having lost his 
teeth, a young flatterer who sat next him swore, with 
a broad smile which displayed his own incisors, that 
nobody had teeth nowadays. And again, when the 
king, on his seventieth birthday, inquired the age of 
a person from whom he had received a petition, the 
reply was, that the person was of everybody’s age, — 
about three score and ten. Nay, the court preachers 
flattered the sovereign quite as coarsely as the mere 
courtiers, and would not have received invitations 
to dinner if they had not done so. ‘“ My brethren,” 
said one of these, ‘all men must die;’ and at 
that very moment he perceived the eye of the king 
glaring uneasily upon him: “that is to say, Sire, 
almost all men!” and the complaisant preacher 
was at the royal table that day. The same 
parasitical spirit prevailed at the English court, 
especially when bolster neck-cloths were worn, 
simply because the king was compelled to wear 
one, in consequence of a disease in the glands of 
the neck. But, to translate the sentiment of the 
French poet, — 


‘From royal example slaves have never shrunk : 
When Auguste tippled, Poland soon got drunk. 
When the great monarch breathed the air of love, 
Hey, presto, pass! Paris was Venus’ grove! 

But turn’d a churchman and devout, alas ! 
The courtiers ran and beat their breasts at mass.” 


THE PARASITE 259 


It is said by ancient writers that the species of 
flattery which Clisophus paid Philip, was obligatory 
on all the guests and officials in the ancient royal 
courts of Arabia. There, if the king suffered in any 
member, every courtier was bound to be in pain in 
the same limb. This species of flattery was, in fact, 
a conclusion logically arrived at; for the Arab law- 
givers said that it would be absurd in the courtiers to 
vie with one another for the honour of being buried 
alive with the king defunct, if they did not suffer 
with him in all his bodily pains when living. 

The Celtic king of the Sotians maintained a body 
of men who were called the “ Eucholimes,” or the 
“Death Volunteers.” They amounted to six hun- 
dred men; they were lodged, clothed, and tended 
like the king, with whom they daily sat at meat ; but 
they were also bound to die with their master; and 
it is alleged that the chance was eagerly incurred, 
and that no man ever failed, when called upon by the 
king’s decease, to accompany his Majesty on a visit 
to his royal cousin, Orcus. 

But your regular parasite preferred to live and 
flatter living monarchs. “See,” said Niceas, when 
he saw Alexander troubled by a fly that stung him, 
“there is one that will be king over all flies, for he 
has imbibed the blood of him who is king over all 
men.” The flattery was not more delicate which 
Chirisophus once paid at dinner to Dionysius the 
Tyrant. Chirisophus, seeing the king smile at the 
other end of the table, burst into a roar of laughter. 
The king asked, “ Wherefore?” seeing that the para- 
site could not have heard the joke. “True,” said 
Chirisophus; “but I saw that your Majesty had 


260 TABLE TRAITS 


_heard something worth laughing at, and I laughed in 
sympathy.” This species of parasite is not uncom- 
mon in English houses; but perhaps they do their 
office more refinedly than Chirisophus. 

The flatterers of the younger Dionysius were far 
more disgusting in their adulation. They were sim- 
ply absurd, when they pretended to be short-sighted, 
like him, and to be unable to see a dish unless they 
thrust their noses into it. But they were filthy fol- 
lowers when they offered their faces for the king to 
“void his rheum”’ upon, and even went to extremes 
of nastiness at which human nature shudders, but at 
which Dionysius smiled. And yet Dionysius was 
hailed by some of them as a god. It was the cus- 
tom, we are told, in Sicily, for every individual to 
make sacrifices, in his own house, before the figures 
of the nymphs, to get devoutly drunk before the 
altar, and to dance round it as long as the pious 
devotee could keep upon his legs. It was accounted 
as an exquisite piece of flattery in Damocles, the 
parasite, that he refused to perform such service 
before inanimate deities, while he went through the 
whole duty before Dionysius as his god. The Athe- 
nians, it will be remembered, were horror-stricken at 
such impious laudation as this. They fined Demades 
ten talents for having proposed to award divine hon- 
ours to Alexander; and Timagoras, whom they had 
sent as ambassador to the King of Persia, they put 
to death for compromising the Athenian dignity 
by prostrating himself before that king. And, in- 
deed, let us do justice to Alexander himself. He 
had more than misgiving touching his own alleged 
divinity. He had once — “his custom in the after- 


THE PARASITE 261 


noon ’’ — eaten and drunk so enormously, that in the 
evening he was forced to a necessity which compels 
very mortal people,—take physic. He made as 
many contortions, on swallowing it, as a refractory 
child; and Philarches, his parasite, remarked, with a 
rascally hypocritical smile, “Ah! what must be the 
sufferings of mortal man under such medicine, if you 
who are a divinity feel it so much!” The idea of a 
deity drawing health out of an apothecary’s phial, 
was too much even for Alexander, who declined 
to accept the apotheosis, and called Philarches an 
ass. 

But Philarches was only giving the king a taste of 
the parasite’s professional craft. The noble Nicos- 
tratus of Argos quite as impiously flattered the sov- 
ereign of Persia, when, for the sake of currying favour 
with that majestic barbarian, he every night, in his 
own house, prepared a solemn supper, richly pro- 
vided, and offered to the genius of the king (76 daiuon 
tov BaotAéws), for no better reason than that he had 
learned that such was the custom in Persia. Whether 
he profited or not by this delicate attention, Theo- 
pompus does not inform us. 

The Anactes or princes of the royal family of 
Salamis maintained two distinct families, in whom, if 
I understand Athenzeus rightly, the office of flatterer 
(and of spy, I may add) was hereditary. These were 
the Gerginoi and the Promalangai. The former did 
the dirty work of circulating among the people, worm- 
ing themselves into their confidence, getting invited 
to their tables, and then reporting to the Promalangai 
all they had heard. The last-named took such por- 
tions of the report as were worth communicating to 


262 TABLE TRAITS 


the Anactes, with whom they sat at table, where such 
a dish of scandal was daily served as would puzzle 
the social spies of Paris to set before their lord. 

But the profession was not accounted vile ; and the 
professors themselves gloried in their vocation. They 
extolled the easiness of their life, compared, for in- 
stance, with that of the painter, or the labourer, or, 
_ in fact, with that of any other individual but those of 
their own guild. “Truly,” says one, in a fragment 
of Antiphanes, “since the most important business 
in life is to play, laugh, trifle, and drink, I should like 
to know where you would find a condition more 
agreeable than ours.’ 

Once, and once only, a faction of parasites con- 
trived to get possession of a kingdom; and the din- 
ners they gave, and the government they maintained, 
are matters to which description can hardly do jus- 
tice. The faction in question was headed by, and 
almost solely consisted of, three men in Erythra, who 
stood, in regard to Cnopus, the king, as “adorers 
and flatterers ” (apéckuves xai kédaxes), They murdered 
their sovereign, and, by a coup-d’état, possessed them- 
selves of his authority. Their names were Ortyges, 
Irus, and Echarus ; and they ruled with a triple rod 
of iron, held in very effeminate fingers. They silenced 
all opponents by slaying them; and, when no one 
dared utter a breath against them, they vaunted their 
universal popularity. They administered a ferociously 
absurd sort of justice at the gates of Erythra, where 
they sat decked out in purple and gold. They were 
sandalled like women, wore ornaments only suitable 
to females, and sat down to dinner in diadems that 
dazzled the company. 


THE PARASITE 263 


The guests were once free citizens, who were now 
compelled to bear the litters of their parvenu mas- 
ters, to cleanse the streets, and then, by way of. 
contrast, to attend the banquet of the triumvirs, with 
their wives and daughters. If they objected to drag 
these latter to the scene of splendid infamy, the ob- 
jection was only made at the price of death. The 
unhappy women were nothing the safer from insult 
by the decease of their natural protectors; and the 
scenes at the palace were such as only the uncleanest 
of demons could rejoice in. If the authorities had 
reason to be grave, the whole city was compelled to 
affect sorrow ; and duly appointed officers went round, 
with hard-thonged whips, to scourge a sense of “de- 
cent horror”’ into the countenances of the bewildered 
inhabitants. Things at last reached such a pitch of 
extravagant atrocity, that the people took heart of 
grace, screwed up their courage by Chian wine, and 
swept their oppressors into Hades; and, for years 
afterward, commemorative banquets celebrated the 
- restoration of the people from the oppression of the 
parasites. 

I would recommend those who would see the para- 
‘site in action, to study the comedies of Plautus, 
wherein he figures as necessarily as the impertinent 
valet in a Spanish comedy. Plautus calls the para- 
sites poet@, as being given to lying; and it is singu- 
lar that the Gauls called their poets “parasites,” as 
being fond of good living, and not being always in a 
condition to procure it. They had their “dull sea- 
son :” it was when the wealthy were at their villas; 
at which time the parasites dined upon nothing, in 
town, with good “Duke Humphrey.’ When the 


264 TABLE TRAITS 


city was again resorted to by the rich, then the para- 
site might sometimes be seen purchasing, by order 
of his patron, the provisions for the evening feast. 
We find one of these gentry, in Plautus, boasting 
that he knows a story that will be worth thirty din- 
ners to him. Before the era of printing, the parasite, 
with his jests and histories, was a sort of living cir- 
culating library. Saturion (another of Plautus’s pic- 
tures of the parasite) is at peace with himself, 
because, as he says, he can provide for his daughter 
by bequeathing to her his rich collection of jokes and 
dinner-stories. “They are all sparkling Attic,’ he 
says; “and there is not a dull Sicilian anecdote 
among them.” 

If the race were, in some sense of the word, “lit- 
erary,” they were not at all in love with science, or 
the improvements wrought by its application. Wit- 
ness the bitterness with which Plautus makes one 
denounce the sun-dial, then of recent introduction. 
Before that telltale appeared, dinners used to be 
served when people were hungry; but now even 
hungry people wait for the appointed hour. In short, 
throughout life, they worked but for the sake of the 
banquet and wine-pot; and, even after death, they 
longed for libations, as appears in the epitaph on the 
parasite, Sergius of Pola, who is made to say, from 
the grave: | 


«¢ Si urbani perhiberi vultis 
Arenti meo cineri, 
Cantharo piaculum vinarium festinate.” 


‘Tf you’ve any regard for this corpse here of mine, 
Be so good as to damp it with hogsheads of wine.” 


THE PARASITE 265 


Finally, these diners-out by profession were essen- 
tially selfish ; and the fire of their attachment blazed 
up, or died away, according to that in the kitchen of 
the Amphitryon by whom they were maintained. 

A good specimen of the parasite of the last cen- 
tury may be found in the Captain Cormorant of 
gvmsteys ‘Bath Guide;” but the race is by no 
means extinct, though the individual be more rarely 
met with; and, be it said as their due, they execute 
their office with something more of decency than did 
their ancient predecessors. Modern flattery, like 
modern oils, is “double refined.” Let us see if we 
can trace the course of this refinement through the 
table traits of Utopia and the golden age. 


The Tables of Utopia and the 
Golden Age 


THE good Archbishop Fénélon, in his “ Voyage 
dans l’Ile des Plaisirs,’ cites some charming ex- 
amples of the pleasant way in which people lived in 
the Utopian land of Cocagne, which he describes 
from imagination, and where the laws were charac- 
terised by more good sense than distinguishes the 
legislation of the Utopian authorities of More. 

The “Voyage” of Fénélon was probably founded 
on a fragment of Teleclides, who has narrated in 
rattling Greek metres, how the citizens of the world 
lived and banqueted in the golden age of its lusty 
youth. The poet puts the description into the mouth 
of Saturn, who says, “I will tell you what sort of 
life I vouchsafed to men in the early ages of crea- 
tion. In the first place, peace reigned universally, 
and was as common as the water you wash your hands 
with. Fear and disease were entirely unknown; and 
the earth provided spontaneously for every human 
want. The rivers then poured cataracts of wine into 
the valleys; and cakes disputed with loaves to get 
into the mouth of man, as he walked abroad, sup- 
plicating to be eaten, and giving assurances of excel- 
lent flavour and quality. The tables were covered 


with fish which floated into the kitchens, and cour- 
266 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 267 


teously put themselves to roast. By the sides of the 

couches rolled streams of sauces, bearing with them 
_ joints of ready-roasted meat; while rivulets full of 
vagouts were near the guests, who dipped in, and 
took therefrom, according to their fancy. Every one 
could eat of what he pleased; and all that he ate 
was sweet and succulent. There were countless 
pomegranate-seeds for seasoning; little pdtés and 
grives, done to a turn, insinuated themselves into the 
mouths of the banqueters ; and tarts got smashed in 
trying to force their way into the throat. The chil- 
dren played with sow-paps and other delicacies as 
they would with toys; and the men were gigantic in 
height, and obese in figure.” 

The above is a specimen of the classical idea of 
that delicious — 


«. , . Land of Cocagne, 
That Elysium of all that is friand and nice, 
Where for hail they have bonbons, and claret for rain, 
And the skaters, in winter, show off on cream-ice.” 


It is a theme with which modern poets have been 
as fond of dealing as Teleclides and others of the 
tuneful children of song, in the early period when 
young Time counted his birthdays by the sun. It 
has been well treated by Béranger, who thus de- 
scribes, through my imperfect translation, his own 
impressions of — 


A JOURNEY TO THE LAND OF COCAGNE 


‘¢ Ho, friends, every one! 
Let us up and be gone; 
To where care is not known, 
Let us hasten away! 


268 TABLE TRAITS 


Yes; fired with champagne, 
I reel o’er the plain, 
And see dear Cocagne 

In its sunny array. 


“Oh! land full of glee, — 
Here long may I be, 
And laugh merrilie 
At Fate’s changeable way. 
For here — what a treat ! — 
I may love, drink, and eat, 
And — this makes it more sweet — 
There is nothing to pay! 


““ My appetite’s great, 

And I see the huge gate 

Of a tower of state 
At my elbow, handy: 

The tower is a pie; 

And tall guards, standing by, 

Carry spears ten feet high, 
All in sugar candy. 


“ Ah! banquet of fun, 

It will please ev’ry one: 
Look, there is not a gun 

But of sugar is made! 
See the paintings, how grand, 
And the statues, they stand, 
All wrought by the hand 

Out of sweet marmalade. 


‘‘ Here the people repair 
In gay crowds to the square, 
Where the jests of a fair 
With loud merriment shine; 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 


Where the fountains so gay 

Not with water do play, 

But are sparkling away 
With rich, rosy, old wine! 


‘¢ Here, the baking’s begun; 
There, the baking is done; — 
See the folks how they run, 

With beef, mutton, and veal, 
And the eaters think fit 
That the man who lacks wit 
Shall be made a ‘ turnspit,’ 
And be bound to the wheel. 


‘¢ To the palace I haste, 
With two Falstatfs I feast 
(Twenty stone weighs the least), 
And with them hob and nob. 
And here, too, I’ve found, 
Where such good things abound, 
Shy Venus quite round, 
And young Cupid a squab. 


ss No sadness of brow, 

No pedantic vain show, 

No pompous state bow, 
Can be ever allow’d ; 

But with feasting and song 

We carry night on, 

Drink deep and drink long, 
And toast beauty aloud. 


‘6 Now, good-natured lasses, 
To the music of glasses, 
As the sweet dessert passes, 
Let’s laugh the time by. 


269 


270 TABLE TRAITS 


Let fools sigh and snuffle, 
And merriment muffle, a 
But you, dears, shall ruffle 

Our pro—priety. 


‘¢ So, in this joyous way, 

With fresh loves ev’ry day, 

And with no debts to pay, 
We scamper time o’er ; 

While between drinking deep, 

And light visions in sleep, 

Our young years will creep 
To a hundred or more. 


“Yes, dear old Cocagne, 

It’s with thee, — free from pain, — 
But who checks my strain, 

In an accent so shrill? 
For, while singing, I thought, — 
But my friends, we are caught, — 
*Tis the waiter who’s brought 

His confounded long bill.” 


The fairy-land of Cocagne is said to derive its 
name from the Latin, coguere, “to cook.” Duchat 
says, that its flocks and herds present themselves 
perfectly cooked, and that the larks descend from 
the skies ready roasted. For it is there alone, — _ 


«¢ Where so ready all nature its cookery yields, 
Maccaroni au parmesan grows in the fields; 
Little birds fly about with the true pheasant taint, 
And the geese are all born with a liver complaint.” 


The Utopian banquets, which are described by 
More, present an imaginary view of society in an- 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 271 


other extreme. The learned chancellor, amid much 
invented nonsense, pictures the manners of the citi- 
zens of Amaurat after the fashion of those of Crete 
and Lacedzmonia, especially with regard to their 
common halls for their repasts, —a fashion, by the 
way, which was partially followed in the club-rooms 
of Attica. Others of the author’s ideas have been 
realised since he wrote; and, in this respect, his 
Utopia may be said to have done good service; but 
there is a woful residue of nonsense, nevertheless, 
which is neither amusing nor useful. 

Sir Thomas describes the citizens of Amaurat as 
possessing provision markets abundantly supplied 
with herbs, fruits, bread, fowl, and cattle. The lat- 
ter were previously slain in extramural slaughter- 
houses, well furnished with running water, for washing 
away the filth after killmg. The butchers were slaves 
(for serfdom “was a peculiar institution” of this 
happy republic), the free citizens not being permitted 
to kill animals, lest such pursuit should harden their 
singularly tender characters. “In every street,” 
we are told by the author, “there are great halls that 
lie at an equal distance from one another, and are 
marked by peculiar names. The Syphogrants dwell 
in those, that are set over thirty families, fifteen lying 
on one side of it, and as many on the other. In 
these they do all meet and eat. The stewards of 
every one of them come to the market-place at an 
appointed hour, and, according to the number of 
those that belong to their hall, they carry home pro- 
visions. But they take more care of their sick than 
of any others. . . . After the steward of the hospi- 
tals has taken for them whatever the physician does 


272 TABLE TRAITS 


prescribe for them, at the market-place, then the 
best things that remain are distributed equally among 
the halls, in proportion to their numbers; only, in 
the first place, they serve the prince, the chief priest, 
the tranibors, and ambassadors, and strangers, if there 
are any, which, indeed, falls out but seldom, and for 
whom there are houses well furnished, particularly 
appointed, when they come among them. At the 
hours of dinner and supper, the Syphogranty, being 
called together by sound of trumpet, meets and eats 
together, except only such as are in the hospitals, or 
lie sick at home. Yet, after the halls are served, no 
man is hindered to carry provisions home from the 
market-place, for they know none does that but for 
some good reason ; for, though any that will may eat 
at home, yet none does it willingly, since it is both 
an indecent and foolish thing for any to give them- 
selves the trouble to make ready an ill dinner at 
home, when there is a much more plentiful one made 
ready for him so near at hand. All the uneasy and 
sordid services about these halls are done by their 
slaves; but the dressing and cooking of their meat, 
and ordering of their tables belong only to the 
women, which goes round all the women of every 
family by turns. They sit at three or more tables, 
according to their numbers; the men sit toward the 
wall, and the women sit on the other side, that if any 
of them fall suddenly ill, which is ordinary to those 
expecting to be mothers, she may, without disturbing 
the rest, rise and go to the nurses’ room, who are 
there with the suckling children, where there is 
always fire and clean water at hand, and some cradles 
in which they may lay the young children,” etc. 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 273 


But, to return from this public nursery to the public 
dining-hall, «all the children under five years of age 
‘dined with the nurses: the rest of the younger 
sort of both sexes, till they are fit for marriage, do 
Metueteserve toose that sit at table; or, if they are 
not strong enough for that, they stand by them in 
great silence, and eat that which is given them by 
those that sit at table, nor have they any other for- 
mality of dining.” The whole formality was bad 
enough, and that last mentioned was a Doric custom 
prevailing in Crete. As to the personal arrange- 
ments at these Utopian tables, the infelicitous guests 
stood much upon their order of precedence: the Sy- 
phogrant and his wife, the guddige Frau Syphogrant- 
inn, presided at the centre of the cross table, at the 
upper end of the hall. After the magistrates and 
their mates, came the priests and their ladies, — for 
More placed the Church below the State, and hinted 
that celibacy in the clergy was not to be commended. 
Below these, groups of the young and gay were 
placed, between flanking companies of the aged and 
grave, to spoil their mirth, and improve their man- 
ners ; and this Spartan custom was occasionally imi- 
tated at Athenian feasts, albeit the Athenians looked 
with something like contempt upon the institutions 
of old Laconia. The best dishes were placed before 
the oldest men, and the latter gave of the dainty 
bits to the young, if these merited such favour 
by their behaviour; if not, they took their chance 
of what the older gourmands might leave, or were 
obliged to be content with the plainer fare allotted 
to them. 

During this delectable process, the young could 


274 TABLE TRAITS 


not have offended by their gaiety, nor the old have 
improved them by conversation, seeing that a reader 
was appointed, to assist digestion by reading aloud an 
essay on morality. The Romans had the same 
office performed at some of their meals by learned 
slaves. More expressly says that the Utopian lecture 
was so short, that it was neither tedious nor uneasy 
to those that heard it; and that after it, the elders 
not only wagged their beards by “pleasant enlarge- - 
ments,’ but encouraged the young to follow them in 
the same track. This must have been after the 
supper, when it was the law of Utopia, not to “run a 
mile,’ but to “rest awhile.” The dinners were des- 
patched quickly, because work awaited the diners, 
while the supper-eaters had nothing to do afterward 
but sleep. This must have been all terribly dreary, if 
it had ever been realised. The only pleasant feature 
in More’s Utopian banquets is that wherein he says 
that there was always music at supper, and fruit 
served up after meat (which, by the way, was a cruel 
trial for the digestive powers), and that as the repast 
proceeded, “some burn perfumes, and sprinkle about 
sweet ointments, and sweet waters; and they are 
wanting in nothing that may cheer up their spirits ; 
for they give themselves a large allowance in that 
way, and indulge themselves in all such pleasures as 
are attended with noinconvenience. Thus,” he adds, 
“do they that are in towns eat together; but in the 
country, where they live at a greater distance, every 
one eats at home, and no family wants any necessary 
sort of provision; for it is from them that provisions 
are sent in to them that live in the towns.” 

I have noticed above the slave readers at Roman 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 275 


dinners. These were seldom born slaves; indeed, of 
born slaves among the Greeks or Romans, the num- 
_ bers were fewer than might be reasonably imagined. 
Those who became authors or teachers were the dis- 
tinguished and illustrious of their class; and it was 
they who relieved the tedium of a Roman repast by 
reading livelier sallies than essays on morality, like 
the Utopians. If their rank in humanity was low, 
their ability secured for them many privileges which 
even freedmen did not enjoy. Of this rank of read- 
ing slaves was Andronicus, the inventor of dramatic 
poetry. Plautus, the witty, but coarse play-writer, 
miller, and Jack of all trades, was a slave. Terence 
was also a dramatist, and not only a slave, but a 
negro slave. A®sop the fabulist, Phzedrus, his imi- 
tator, and the moral philosopher Epictetus, were 
slaves. The latter, who was as low in condition 
among bondsmen as he was exalted in his character 
of teacher of mankind, was the slave of one who had 
been a slave, —a depth of degradation than which 
there can be none deeper. But his mission was a 
great one; for he appears to me to have been an 
instrument employed to prepare men’s minds for a 
change from the vices of paganism to the virtues 
of Christianity. His writings are as stepping-stones 
across the dark and rapid stream dividing error from 
truth. -They are admirably calculated to enable men 
to go forward ; not only to induce them to make the 
first step out of infidelity ; but, having made it, rather 
to make a second in advance toward Christ, than go 
backward again in the direction of the dazzling unin- 
telligibilities of the Capitoline Jove. 

From slavery, if we turn our eyes toward mere 


276 TABLE TRAITS 


poverty, the next condition to it, we shall see that the 
poor men characteristically paid their addresses to 
poetry, —and they were the “lions” at the dinners 
and assemblies of Rome. Such was Horace, who, if 
he were not in want, was of inferior descent, his 
father having been a slave, and subsequently, on 
being enfranchised, a tax-gatherer. Virgil was of 
equally mean descent on the paternal side; but he 
derived some portion of nobility from his mother. 
Juvenal, too, was not only poor and a poet, —a con- 
dition that could draw upon it only a serf’s contempt, 
— but he was, moreover, an exceedingly angry poet. 
In equal proportion as he was poor, angry, and satir- 
ical in poetry, was Lucian poor, angry, and satirical 
in prose. 

If the dining-out poets were poor, it was much the 
same with the philosophers. The proudest walks of 
philosophy were trodden by Demosthenes, the black- 
smith. Socrates was the ill-featured, but original- . 
minded, son of a mason and midwife. Epicurus was 
only rich in a valueless boast of being descended 
from Ajax; and Isocrates, whose father manufactured 
the musical ancestry from which are descended the 
modern families of pianoforte and fiddle, was also 
one of the immortal race of intellectual giants. 
Of other writers we may remark, that Quintus Cur- 
tius, whose “ Alexander the Great”’ is the first his- 
torical romance that ever was written, and contains 
the best description of a Babylonian banquet that 
ever was painted in words, was of an ignoble family. 
Celsus was, at least, not a Roman citizen, though 
resident at Rome; and Plutarch was just ‘“ respect- 
able,” and nothing more, —though to be worthy of 


~ 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 277 


respect, as the term implies, is as high rank as a man 
need sigh for. 

But though art and science, though the Nine 
Sisters who made Parnassus vocal, were thus wor- 
shipped by the slave and his cousin the beggar, 
wealth was by no means a synonymous term for 
either sloth or incapacity. The opulent Lucretius, 
who believed nothing; the two Plinys, the soul of 
one of whom, “with a difference,’ entered into 
Horace Walpole, and who wrote about his slave 
Zozimus, as Walpole does of his favourite servants ; 
Pieetender’ and chivalrous Tibullus,—a Latin Sir 
Philip Sidney ; the profligate Sophocles; A®schylus, 
the bottle-drainer ; and the lofty Euripides : all these 
mounted Pegasus with golden spurs, and gave glori- 
ous dinners to guests with whom they could contend 
in the battle of brains. Some, like Martial, got their 
mouths filled with the sugar-candy of imperial recom- 
pense. Czesar, the commentator, was the descend- 
ant of the Sabine kings, and the founder of an 
empire. In Plato we see the double condition of 
aristocrat and slave. From the latter condition 
he was rescued by his noble friends at the cost of 
three thousand drachmas; more fortunate in this 
than Diogenes, who, being friendless, was left to hug 
his irons, and teach his master’s sons to love virtue 
and liberty. 

And the mention of the name of Plato reminds me 
of a more modern philosopher, who did not lack 
reverence for him,—I mean Bacon,—and Bacon 
naturally brings me from my digression to the subject 
of “table traits” in imaginary Utopias. This phil- 
osopher, in his « New Atlantis,” is even more infelic- 


278 TABLE TRAITS 


itous than More, both in the framing of his fiction, 
and the extracting from it of a moral. The table 
laws spoken of in Solomon’s house have more of a 
jolly aspect than those drawn by Sir Thomas More. 
For instance: “I will not hold you long with recount- 
ing of our brewhouses, bakehouses, and kitchens, 
where are made divers drinks, breads, and meats, 
rare and of special effects. Wines we have of grapes, 
and drinks of other juice, of fruits, of grains, and of 
roots ; and of mixtures with honey, sugar, manna, 
and fruits dried and decocted; also of the tears and 
woundings of trees, and of the pulp of canes; and 
these drinks are of several ages, some to the age at 
least of forty years. We have drinks also brewed of 
several herbs or roots, and spices, yea, with several 
fleshes and wine-meats, whereof some of the drinks 
are such as they are in effect meat and drink both. 
So that divers, especially in age, do desire to live 
with them, with little or no meat or bread ; and, above 
all, we strive to have drinks of extreme thin parts, to 
insinuate into the body, and yet without all biting 
sharpness, or fretting; insomuch as some of them 
put upon the back of your hand will, with a little 
stay, pass through to the palm, and yet taste mild to 
the mouth. We have also waters which we ripen in 
that fashion as they become nourishing, so that they 
are, indeed, excellent drink, and many will use no 
other. Breads we have of several grains, roots, and 
kernels, yea, and some of flesh and fish dried, with 
divers kinds of leavenings and seasonings, so that 
some do extremely move appetites ; some do nourish 
so as divers do live of them without any other meat, 
who live very long. So, for meats, we have some 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 279 


of them so beaten and made tender and mortified, 
yet without all corrupting, as a weak heat of the > 
stomach will turn them into good chylus, as well as a 
strong heat would meat otherwise prepared. We 
have some meats, also, and breads and drinks which, 
taken by some, enable them to fast long after; and 
some other that will make the very flesh of men’s 
bodies sensibly more hard and tough, and their 
strength far greater than otherwise it would be.” 

In this way could philosophy disport itself, and 
not with much attendant profit, beyond amusement. 
Before I conclude this section, I may notice a more 
graceful fiction, touching banquets, than anything to 
be met with among the philosophers. The inhabit- 
ants of the coast of Malabar believe that the double 
cocoas of the Moluccas, annually thrown on their 
shore by the waves, and joyfully welcomed by the 
expecting inhabitants, are the produce of a palm-tree 
growing in the fathomless recesses of the ocean ; and 
that they arise from among coral-groves endowed 
with supernatural qualities and attributes. For a 
detailed account of this supposed phenomenon, and 
a very pretty illustration of the theory of seeds trans- _ 
ported by winds and currents, I refer all curious 
inquirers to the “ Annals of My Village,” by a Lady. 
In the meantime, I venture to put into verse the 
supposed scene which occurs at the annual cocoa- 
banquet in Malabar: 


’Neath the waves of Mincoy grows a magical tree, 
In the sunless retreat of a dark coral-grove, 

Where slumber young sprites, — the gay elves of a sea 
Flinging back the bright blue of its heaven above. 


280 TABLE TRAITS 


There they sip the sweet fruit of that palm-tree, and leave 
Of its best and its ripest for maidens who stray, 

And laugh away time with their lovers at eve, 
And sing to those elves of the deep by the way. 


Oh! to see them at sunset, when down by the shore 
Of their own Malabar in gay clusters they stand, 
Like spirits of light shedding softness all o’er 
The broad sea, and its tribute of fruit, from the land! 
There troops of young girls, in their light-hearted mirth, 
Are laughing at youths who, reclined on the earth, 
Drink the white wine of Kishna; while some are at play, 
Flinging glances and handfuls of roses, in showers, 
That their lovers can’t tell, as they bend ’neath the fray, 
Which are falling the fastest, — the glances, or flowers. — 


And then on the sands where these young people meet, 
What hushing of songs and suppressing of glee, 
As the waves bring in gently, and waft to their feet, 
The ripe fruit of the palm that lives under the sea! 
There, while, half in earnest, fair Malabar’s daughters, 
Half play, dip their white, sandal’d feet in the waters, 
To catch the ripe cocoas, and run back again, 
As the wave washes over their small anklet bells, 
There are some, youths and maidens, who, link’d in a chain, 
Like pearls strung, and mix’d, here and there, with sea-shells, 
Dash into the flood for the fruit of the palm, 
Which they strive for, and, winning, bring joyously out; 
Then lean on their lovers, all panting and warm 
With laughter and splashing the waters about. 


Oh, who would not like to pass summer away 

Amid scenes such as this? Oh, who would not love 
With Malabar’s daughters, at twilight, to play, 

And taste the ripe fruit of that dark coral-grove ? 


The Malabar palm was not the only tree of its 
kind that used to afford holidays and banquetings to 
the people of the East, that is, according to the 


THE TABLES OF UTOPIA 281 


poets. The Talipot palm of Ceylon, or, as the 
natives somewhat unmusically call it, “lanka dwipa,” 
was, in the olden time of pleasant fiction, one of this 
gifted species. But the banquet it afforded was not 
of annual occurrence; for the tree never flowers 
till it is fifty years old, and dies immediately after 
producing its fruit. The Kings of Candy used to 
bestow the rich gift of some of its blossoms on the 
favoured fair one whose head rested on the bosom of 
the sovereign at the feast, and who lifted the bowl to 
his painted lips. It was, however highly esteemed, 
not such a present as Demetrius Poliorcetes made to 
Lamia, after that accomplished courtesan had erected 
at Sicyon a portico so superb, that Polemo wrote a 
book to describe it; and poem and portico became 
the table-talk of all Greece. The gift of Demetrius 
was a magnificent purse, containing 250 talents, 
which, by the way, he had compelled the reluctant 
Athenians to contribute ; and this he sent to Lamia, 
saying, that it was merely “for soap.” The extrava- 
gant lady spent it all in one single, but consuming, 
feast! How pleasantly, by contrast, shines that 
other courtesan, Leazena, whose wit made guests for- 
get that the feast was frugal; and to whom the 
Athenians erected a bronze lioness, without a tongue, 
in honour of the lady who heroically had bitten out 
her own, that torture might not make her betray the 
accomplices of her protector Harmodius, in the 
murder of her tyrant Hipparchus ! 

We have not found much of the refinement we 
looked for in these remote periods and banquets. 
Let us see what may be discovered in the table 
traits of England in early times. 


Table Traits of England in Early 


Times 


WueEN Diodorus Siculus wrote an account of the 
aboriginal inhabitants of Britain, some fifty years 
before the Christian era, he described the island as 
being thickly inhabited, ruled by many kings and 
princes, and all living peaceably together, — though 
with war-chariots and strong arms, to settle quarrels 
when they occurred. But if our ancestors lived 
peaceably among themselves, they can hardly be 
said to have lived comfortably. Their habitations 
were of reed, or of wood; and they gathered in the 
harvest by cutting off the ears of corn. These ears 
they garnered in subterranean repositories, where- 
from they daily culled the ripest grain; and, rudely 
dressing the same, had thence their sustenance. 
Diodorus says that our primitive sires were far re- 
moved from the cunning and wickedness of the rest 
of the world; and other writers contrast them favour- 
ably with the Irish, who are said to have fed on 
human flesh, to have had enormous appetites for such 
food, and to have been given to the nasty habit of 
devouring their deceased fathers; but it is not un- 
common for others, as well as for Irish sons, to 


devour, at least, their parents’ substance, even at the 
282 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 283 


present day. The food of an Irish child was cer- 
tainly illustrative of character,—we should rather 
say that the solemnity of offering the first food to a 
child was characteristic. Caius Julius Solinus, a 
writer of the first century, says that, “when a Hiber- 
nian mother gives birth to a male child, she puts its 
first food on the point of her husband’s sword, and 
lightly inserts this foretaste of meat into the mouth 
of the infant, on its very tip; and, by family vows, 
desires that it may never die but under arms.” In 
other words, the relations wished that the little 
stranger might never be in want of a row, when 
disposed to distinguish the family name! 

In the days of Julius Czesar, our stalwart sires sup- 
ported their thews and sinews on milk and flesh, — 
the diet of a pugilist. We see how much progress 
was made by the time of Constantine, — the Constan- 
tine that was crowned in Britain, — “when,” says a 
contemporary writer, “the harvests sufficed alike for 
the gifts of Ceres and Bacchus, and the pastures were 
covered with innumerable multitudes of tame flocks, 
distended with milk, or laden with fleeces.” 

I very much fear, however, notwithstanding the 
rather poetical accounts of certain early writers, that 
our aboriginal ancestry were very little superior to 
the New Zealanders. They were, perhaps, more un- 
civilised, and quite as ignorant ; and their abstinence 
from the flesh of hares and poultry, and, in the 
northern parts of the island, from fish, bespeaks a 
race who lacked, at once, industry and knowledge. 
Indeed, it is by no means certain that we do not 
wrong the New Zealanders by suggesting their pos- 
sible inferiority to the Britons, seeing that the latter 


284 TABLE TRAITS 


are very strongly suspected of being guilty of the 
most revolting cannibalism. 

They were clever enough to brew mead and ale; 
but wine and civilisation were brought to them by 
their enemies, the Romans, —invaders whom, for 
some reasons, they might have welcomed with a 
sentiment akin to the line in Béranger: 


“‘ Vivent nos amis! nos amis, les ennemis!” 


They ate but twice a day. The last meal was the 
more important one. Their seats were skins, or 
bundles of hay, flung on the ground. The table was 
a low stool, around which British chiefs sat, and, even 
in the locality occupied by modern Belgravia, tore 
their food with teeth and nails, or hacked at it with a 
wretched knife, as bad as anything of the sort now 
in common use in Gaul. In short, they committed a 
thousand solecisms, the very idea of which is suffi- 
cient to make the Sybarites of Belgravia very much 
ashamed of their descent from the savages of Britain. 

It was characteristic of the sort of civilisation which 
the Anglo-Saxons brought with them to England, that 
they introduced the rather vulgar custom of taking 
four meals a day. The custom was, however, one 
solemnly observed by the high-feeding nobility of the 
Saxons. They ate good solid joints of flesh-meat, 
boiled, baked, or broiled. It would seem that, in 
those days, cooks were not of such an illustrious 
guild as that which they subsequently formed. A 
cook among the Anglo-Saxons was little more ac- 
counted of than the calf he cut up into collops. 
The cook, in fact, was a slave; and was as uncere- 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 285 


moniously bequeathed by his owner, in the latter’s 
last will and testament, as though the culinary artist 
had been a mere kitchen utensil. At Saxon tables, 
both sexes sat together, — a custom refined in itself, 
refining in its effects, and of such importance, that_ 
half a dozen nations claim the honour of being the 
inventors of that excellent custom. In Europe, 
Turkey alone has obstinately refused to follow this 
civilising example; and Turkey is falling to pieces. 
It may, therefore, be logically proved, that where 
table rights are not conceded to the ladies, nations 
slowly perish ; and — “serve them right.” 

It is a mark of Anglo-Saxon delicacy, that table- 
cloths were features at Anglo-Saxon feasts; but, as 
the long ends were used in place of napkins, the 
delicacy would be of a somewhat dirty hue, if the 
cloth were made to serve at a second feast. There 
was a rude sort of display upon the board; but 
the order of service was of a quality that would 
strike the “ Jeameses” of the age of Victoria with 
inexpressible disgust. The meat was never “ dished,” 
and “covers” were as yet unknown. The attendants 
brought the viands into the dining-hall on the spits, 
knelt to each guest, presented the spit to his con- 
sideration; and, the guest having helped himself, 
the attendant went through the same ceremony with 
the next guest. Hard drinking followed upon these 
same ceremonies, and even the monasteries were 
not exempt from the sins of gluttony and drunken- 
ness. Notwithstanding these bad habits, the Anglo- 
Saxons were a cleanly people. The warm bath was 
in general use. Water, for hands and feet, was 
brought to every stranger on entering a house 


286 TABLE TRAITS 


wherein he was about to tarry and feed; and it is 
said that one of the severest penances of the Church 
was the temporary denial of the bath, and of cutting 
the hair and nails. 

With the Normans came greater grandeur and in- 
‘creased discomfort. They neither knew nor tolerated 
the use of table-cloths or plain steel forks; but their 
bill of fare showed more variety and costliness than 
the Saxons cared for. Their cookery was such an 
improvement on that of their predecessors in the 
island, that Norman French, and Norman dishes, 
flung the Saxon tongue and table into the annihilat- 
ing position of “vulgarity.”’ The art was so much 
esteemed, that monarchs even granted estates, on 
condition that the holder thereof should, through his 
cook, prepare a certain dish at stated periods, and set 
it before the king. It was under the Normans that 
the boar’s head had regal honours paid it; and its 
progress from the kitchen to the banquet was under 
escort of a guard, and behind the deafening salutes of 
puffy-cheeked trumpeters. The crane was then what 
the goose is now, — highly esteemed; yet labouring 
under the shadow of a suspicion of being “ common.” 
The peacock, on the other hand, was only seen, tail 
and all, at the tables of the wealthy. Their beverage 
was of a very bilious character, — spicy and cor- 
dialed ; namely, hippocras, piment, morat, and mead, 
The drink of the humbler classes partook of a more 
choleraic quality. It consisted of cider, perry, and 
, ale. The Norman maxim for good living and plenty 
of it, was to “rise at five, dine at nine, sup at five, 
and bed at nine, if you’d live to a hundred all but 
one.”’ Dinner at nine is, however, a contradiction of 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 287 


terms ; for dinner, as I have said, is the abbreviation 
of dixiéme heure, or ‘ten o'clock,” the time at which 
all people sat down to a solid repast in the days of 
the first Williams. 

In the two following centuries, cooks and kings 
launched into far greater magnificence than had 
ever, hitherto, been seen in England. Richard II. 
entertained ten thousand guests daily at his nu- 
merous tables; and the exceedingly fast Earl of 
Leicester, grandson of the equally slow Henry III, 
is said to have spent twenty-two thousand pounds of 
silver in one year, in eating alone. His thirsty 
household retainers drank no less than three hundred 
and seventy-one pipes of wine, in the same space of 
time. At great banquets, the dishes were reckoned 
by thousands, and kings in vain dictated decrees 
denouncing such dinners; for cooks and convives 
considered them with contempt. As a show of 
moderation, the old four meals a day were now 
reduced to two; but these two were connected by 
such a savoury chain of intermeats and refections, 
that the board was spread all day long, and guests 
were never weary: 


‘¢ Their life like the life of the Germans would be, 
Du lit 4 la table; de la table au lit.” 


To have things “brennying like wild-fire,’ was the 
characteristic of the cookery of the period. Con- 
fectionery of the richest sorts were the lighter 
materials of meals, which were abundantly irrigated 
by hippocras, piment, or claret, or the simpler and 
purer wines of France, Spain, Syria, and Greece. 
Thus might a host say: 


288 TABLE TRAITS 


‘¢ Ye shall have rumney and malespine, 
Both ypocrasse and vernage wine; 
Mountrasse and wyne of Greke, 
Both algrade and despice eke, 
Antioche and bastarde, 

Pyment also and garnarde, 
Wyne of Greke and muscadell, 
Both clary, pyment, and Rochelle.” 


Ricobaldi of Ferrara, writing, about the year 1300, 
of the Italian social condition in the age of Freder- 
ick II., illustrates the former rudeness of the Italian 
manners, by showing that in those days “a man and 
his wife ate off the same plate. There were no 
wooden-handled knives, nor more than one or two 
drinking-cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow 
were unknown ; a servant held a torch during supper. 
The clothes of men were of leather unlined ; scarcely 
any gold or silver was seen on their dress. The 
common people ate flesh but three times a week, and 
kept their cold meat for supper. Many did not drink 
wine in summer. A small stock of corn seemed 
riches. The portions of women were small; their 
dress, even after marriage, was simple. The pride 
of men was to be well provided with arms and 
horses ; that of the nobility to have lofty towers, of 
which all the cities in Italy were full. But now, fru- 
gality has been changed for sumptuousness; every 
thing exquisite is sought after in dress, — gold, silver, 
pearls, silks, and rich furs.” 

The Household Book of the Earl of Northumber- 
land admirably illustrates the interior and table life 
of the greater nobles of the period of Henry VII. 
In this well-known and well-kept record, the family 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 289 


is described as consisting of 166 persons, masters 
and servants; and hospitable reckoning is allowed 
for more than half a hundred strangers who are ex- 
pected daily to partake of the earl’s good cheer. The 
cost for each individual, for board and fuel, is settled 
at twopence halfpenny daily, about one and sixpence 
of our present money, if we take into account the 
relative value of money, and the relative prices of 
provisions. The earl allots for his annual expendi- 
ture 41,178 17s. 8a. More than two-thirds of this 
is consumed in meat, drink, and firing; namely £797 
I1s. 2a. The book carefully states the number of 
pieces which the carver is to cut out of each quarter 
of beef, mutton, veal, pork, nay, even stock-fish and 
salmon ; and supervising clerks were appointed to see 
that this was carried into effect, and to make due entry 
of the same in their registers. An absent servant’s 
share is to be accounted for, and not to be divided 
among the rest. The absentee, if he be on “my 
lord’s” business, received 8d. per day, board wages, 
in winter, and 5¢@. in summer; with 2d. additional 
daily for the keep of a horse. A little more than a 
quarter of wheat, estimated at 5s. 8¢. per quarter, is 
allowed for every month throughout the year; with 
this, 250 quarters of malt at 4s. (two hogsheads to 
the quarter), and producing about a bottle and a 
third of intermediate beer to each person, does not 
say much for the liberality of the lord, though it may 
for the temperance of his retainers. One hundred 
and nine fat beeves are to be bought at Allhallow’s 
tidep atwi3s. 14a. each; a couple of dozen of lean 
kine; at ss, are to: be bought at St. Helen’s, to be 
fattened for service between midsummer and Michael- 


290 TABLE TRAITS 


mas. All the rest of the year, nine weary months, ~ 
the family was on salted provisions, to aid the diges- 
tion of which, the earl, so chary of his liquor, allows 
the profuse aid of 166 gallons of mustard. Six hun- 
dred and forty-seven sheep at Is. 8a. to be eaten 
salted between Lammas and Michaelmas; 25 hogs 
at 2s5.. 28 calves at Is. 8¢., 40 lambs at fom cams 
are other articles which seem to have been re- 
served rather for the upper table than for the ser- 
vants, whose chief fare was salted beef, without 
vegetables, but with mustard @ adscretion! ‘There 
was great scarcity of linen, and the little there was, 
except that for the chapel, not often washed. No 
mention is made of sheets; and though “my lord’s”’ 
table had eight “ table-cloths ” for the year, that of the 
knights had but one, and probably went uncovered 
while the cloth was “at the wash.” If the ale was 
limited, the wine appears to have been more liberally 
dispensed; and ten tuns and two hogsheads of Gas- 
cony wine, at £4 13s. 4d. per tun, show the bent of | 
the earl’s taste. Ninety-one dozens of candles for the 
year, and no fires after Lady Day, except half-fires in 
the great room and the nursery ; twenty-four fires, 
with a peck of coals daily for each (for the offices), 
and eighty chaldrons of coals, at 4s. 10a, with sixty- 
four loads of wood, at 1s. a load, are the provisions 
made for lighting and firing. It must have been 
cold work to live in the noble earl’s house in York- 
shire, from Lady Day till the warm summer came; 
which advent is sometimes put off till next year. 
The family rose at six, or before; for mass was espe-. 
cially ordered at that hour, in order to force the 
household to rise early. The dinner-hour was ten 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 291 


A.M.; four P.M. was the hour for supper; and at 
nine the bell rang for bed. I have omitted the 
breakfast, which took place at seven, after mass; 
when my lord and lady sat down to a repast of two 
pieces of salt fish, and half a dozen red herrings, with 
four fresh ones, or a dish of sprats, and a quart of 
beer, and the same measure of wine. This was on 
meagre days. At other seasons, half a chine of mut- 
ton, or of boiled beef, graced the board of the delicate 
earl and countess, who sometimes forgot that they 
had to dine at ten. Capons, at 2d. each, were only 
on the lord’s table, and plovers, at a penny (at Christ- 
mas), were deemed too good for any digestion that 
was not carried on ina “noble”’ stomach. Game gen- 
erally is specified, but without intimation as to limit 
of the board. No doubt the fragments were not re- 
jected at the servants’ table; but much certainly 
went in doles at the gate. My lord maintained be- 
tween twenty and thirty horses for hisown use. His 
mounted servants found their own; but their keep 
was at the noble master’s cost. Of mounted ser- 
vants, not less than three dozen attended their lord 
on a journey ; and when this journey was for change 
of residence from one mansion to another, the illus- 
trious Percy carried with him bed and_ bedding, 
household furniture, pots, pans, and kitchen utensils 
generally. The baggage-wagon bore these impedi- 
menta; and before and behind them went chiefs and 
serving men, including in the array eleven priests, — 
223 persons in all,—and only two cooks to look 
after their material happiness! No notice is taken 
of plate; but the “hiring of pewter vessels’’ is men- 
tioned ; and with these rough elements did the earl 


292 TABLE TRAITS 


construct his imperfect social system, so far taking 
care for his soul as well as his body, inasmuch as that 
he contributed a groat a year to the shrine of our 
Lady of Walsingham, and the same magnificent sum 
to the holy blood at Hales, on the express condition 
of the interest of the Virgin for the promotion of the 
future welfare of the earl in heaven. Such is an out- 
line of a nobleman’s household in the good old days 

of Henry VII. 

In the reign of the same king, fish was a scarce 
article, and for a singular reason; namely, people 
destroyed them at an unlawful season, for the pur- 
pose of feeding their pigs or manuring the ground. 
The favourite wine at table was Malmsey: it came 
from Candy; and there was a legal restriction against 
its costing more than £4 per butt. In this reign 
our cooks wrought at fires made with wood im- 
ported from Gascony and Languedoc, whence also 
much wine was brought, but, by law, only in English 
bottoms. The richest man of this reign was Sir 
William Stanley, into whose hands fell nearly all the 
spoil of Bosworth Field; and therewith he maintained 
a far more princely house and table than his master. 

In Pegge’s “ Cury ” there is an account of the rolls 
of provisions, with their prices, in the time of Henry 
VIII.; and we find that, at the dinner given at the 
marriage of Gervase Clifton and Mary Nevile, the 
price of three hogsheads of wine (one white, one red, 
one claret) was set down at 45 5s. 

The dining-rooms —and, indeed, these were the 
common living-rooms in the greatest houses — were 
still uncomfortable places. The walls were of stone, 
partially concealed by tapestry hung upon timber 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 293 


hooks, and taken down whenever the family removed 
(leaving bare the stone walls) lest the damp should 
rot it. It was a fashion that had lasted for centuries ; 
but it began to disappear. when mansions ceased to 
be fortresses. The tapestry, it may be observed, 
was suspended on a wooden frame projecting from 
the wall, between which and the hangings there was 
a passage wide enough to kill a man, as Hamlet did 
Polonius, “behind the arras.’” It was not till the 
reign of Charles I. that houses were built with under- 
ground rooms; the pantry, cellars, kitchens, and 
storerooms were, previous to this reign, all on the 
ground floor; and the officials presiding in each 
took there, respectively, their solemn post on great 
days of state dinners. There were certain days 
when the contents of these several offices, meat and 
drink, were bountifully supplied to every applicant. 
To revert to tapestry : we see the time of its change, 
in the speech of Falstaff, who wishes his hostess to 
sell her tapestry, and adopt the cheaper painted 
canvas which came from Holland. 

At this time, and, indeed, long after, our English 
yeomanry and tradesmen were more anxious to in- 
vigorate their bodies by a generous diet, than to 
dwell in well-furnished houses, or to find comfort in 
cleanliness and elegance. “These English,” said 
the Spaniards who came over with Philip IL, ‘have 
their houses made of sticks and dirt; but they fare 
commonly as well as the king.” 

Previous to the age of Elizabeth, even the monarch, 
well as he might fare, and gloriously as he shone in 
pageants, was but simply lodged. The furniture of 
the bedroom of Henry VIII. was of the very sim- 


294 TABLE TRAITS 


plest ; and the magnificent Wolsey was content with 
deal for the material of most of the furniture of his 
palace. But the community generally was, from this 
period, both boarded and bedded more comfortably 
and refinedly than before. The hours for meals 
were eight, noon, and six; but ‘“after-meats,” and 
“after-suppers,” filled up the intervals. It was 
chiefly at the ‘“after-supper” that wine was used. 
The dinner, however, had become the principal meal 
of the day. It was abundant; but the jester and 
harper were no longer tolerated at it, with their 
lively sauce of mirth and music. It was the fashion 
to be sad, and ceremonious dinners were celebrated 
in stately silence, or a dignified sotto voce. Each 
guest took his place according to a properly mar- 
shalled order of precedence; and, before sitting 
down to dinner, they washed with rose-water and 
perfumes, like the parochial boards of half a century 
ago, who used also to deduct the expenses of both 
dinners and rose-water from the rates levied for the 
relief of the poor; this, too, at a time when men who 
were not parish authorities were being hanged for 
stealing to the amount of a few shillings. 

By the reign of Elizabeth, napkins had been added 
to tablecloths. The wealthy ate the manchet, or 
fine wheaten bread; the middle classes were content 
with a bread of coarser quality called “chete ;” and 
the ravelled, brown, or maslin bread was consumed 
by those who could afford to procure no _ better. 
There was a passion for strong wines at this time. 
Of this, France sent more than half a hundred differ- 
ent sorts, and thirty-six various kinds were imported 
from other parts of Europe. About thirty thousand 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 295 


tuns were imported yearly, exclusive of what the 
nobility imported free of duty. The compound 
wines were in great request; and ladies did not, dis- 
dain to put their lips to distilled liquors, such as 
rosa-solis and aqua-vite. Ale was brewed stronger 
than these distillations; and our ancestors drank 
thereof to an extent that is terrific only to think of. 
Camden ascribes the prevailing drunkenness to the 
long wars in the Netherlands, previous to which we 
had been held, “of all the northern nations, the most 
commended for sobriety.” The barbarous terms 
formerly used in drinking matches, are all of Dutch, 
German, or Danish origin, and this serves to confirm 
Camden’s assertion. The statutes passed to correct 
the evil were disregarded. James I. was particularly 
desirous to enforce these statutes; but his chief 
. difficulty lay in the fact, that he was the first to 
infringe them. 

In Elizabeth’s reign the “watching candles” of 
Alfred (to.mark the time) were in use in many 
houses. This is a curious trait of indoor life. We 
have an “exterior’’ one, in the fact that the Vicar of 
Hurly, who served Maidenhead, had an addition of 
stipend on account of the danger he ran, in crossing 
the thicket, when he passed to or from the church 
—and his inn. It was not a delicate period, and if 
caraways always appeared at dessert, every one knew 
that they were there for the kind purpose of curing 
expected flatulence in the guests. 

In James the First’s reign, the fashion of Malmsey 
had passed away, and the Hungarian red wine 
(Ofener) had taken its place. It came by Breslau 
to Hamburg, where it was shipped to England. It 


296 TABLE TRAITS 


is a strong wine, and bears some resemblance to 
port. 

In country houses in the seventeenth century, the 
knight or squire was head of a host of retainers, 
three-fourths of whom consumed the substance of 
the master on whose estate they were born, without 
rendering him much other service than drinking his 
ale, eating his beef, and wearing his livery. Brief 
family prayers, and heavy family breakfasts, a run 
with the hounds, and an early dinner, followed by 
long and heavy drinking, till supper-time, when more 
feeding and imbibing went on until each man finished 
his posset, or carried it with him to bed, —such was 
the ordinary course: but it admitted of exceptions 
where the master was a man of intellect, and then 
the country house was a temple of hospitality rather 
than of riot; and good sense and ripe wit took the 
place of the sensuality, obscurity, and ignorance that 
distinguished the boards where the squire was simply 
aeODruton 

Of the table traits of this century, the best ex- 
amples are to be found in Pepys and Evelyn. In 
the diary of the former, may be seen what a jolly 
tavern life could be led by a grave official, and no 
scandal given. Evelyn takes us into better company. 
We find him at the Spanish ambassador’s, when his 
Excellency, by way of dessert, endeavoured to convert 
him to the Roman. Catholic Church. We go with 
him to the feast where the envoy from the Emperor 
of Morocco figured as so civilised a gentleman, while 
the represerttative of the Tsar of Muscovy comported — 
himself like a rude clown; and we dine with him at 
Lady Sunderland’s, where the noble hostess had 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 297 


engaged, for the amusement of the guests, a man 
who swallowed stones, and who not only performed 
the feat in presence of the company, but convinced 
them there was no cheat, by making the stones 
rattle in his stomach. But, zouws avons changé tout 
cela, and not only changed in taste, but improved in 
manners. 

Pepys gives a curious account of a lord mayor’s 
dinner in 1663. It was served in the Guildhall, at 
one o'clock in the day. A bill of fare was placed 
with every salt-cellar, and at the end of each table 
was a list of “the persons proper” there to be seated. 
Here is a mixture of abundance and barbarism. 
“Many were the tables, but none in the hall, but the 
mayor's and the lords’ of the Privy Council, that had 
napkins or knives, which was very strange. I sat at 
the merchant-strangers’ table, where ten good dishes 
to a mess, with plenty of wine of all sorts; but it was 
very unpleasing that we had no napkins, nor change 
of trenchers, and drank out of earthen pitchers and 
wooden dishes. The dinner, it seems, is made by the 
mayor and two sheriffs for the time being, and the 
whole is reckoned to come to 4700 or 4800 at 
most.” Pepys took his spoon and fork with him, as 
was the custom of those days with guests invited to 
great entertainments. “Forks” came in with Tom 
Coryat, in the reign of James I.; but they were not 
“familiar ” till after the Restoration. The “laying of 
napkins,” as it was called, was a profession of itself. 
Pepys mentions, the day before one of his dinner- 
parties, that he went home, and “there found one 
laying of my napkins against to-morrow, in figures of 
all sorts, which is mighty pretty, and, it seems, is his 


298 TABLE TRAITS 


trade; and he gets much money by it.” The age of 
Pepys, we may further notice, was the great “sup- 
ping age.” Pepys himself supped heartily on venison 
pasty ; but his occasional “ next-morning ” remark was 
like that of Scrub: “My head aches consumedly !” 
The dashing Duchess of Cleveland supped off such 
substantials as roast chine of beef; much more 
solid fare than that of the squires in a succeed- 
ing reign, who were content, with Sir Roger de 
Coverley, to wind up the day with “good Cheshire 
cheese, best mustard, a golden pippin, and a pipe of 
John Sly’s best.” 

A few years earlier, Laud had leisure to write 
anxiously to Strafford on the subject of Ulster eels. 
“Your Ulster eels are the fattest and fairest that 
ever I saw, and it’s a thousand pities there should 
be any error in their salting, or anything else about 
them ; for how the carriage should hurt them I do 
not see, considering that other salted eels are brought 
as far, and retain their goodness ; but the dried fish 
was exceeding good.” There was a good deal of 
error in the preserving of other things besides eels, 
if Laud had only known as much. 

It may be mentioned as something of a “table 
trait,’ illustrating the popular appetite in the reign 
of Charles II., that he sent sea stores to the people 
encamped in Moorfields; but they were so well pro- 
visioned by the liberality of the nation, that they 
turned up their noses at the king’s biscuits, and sent 
them back, “not having been used to the same.” 
There was some ungrateful impertinence in this; 
but there was less meanness in it than was shown by 
the great ladies of Queen Anne’s reign, who were 


TABLE TRAITS OF ENGLAND IN EARLY TIMES 299 


curious in old china, and who indulged their passion 
by “swopping”’ their old clothes for fragile cups and 
saucers, instead of giving the former to the poor. 

Dryden speaks in the preface to his “ Love Trium- 
phant,” of a remarkable trait of the time of William 
III. “It is the usual practice,” he says, “of our 
decayed gentry, to look about them for some illustri- 
ous family, and then endeavour to fix their young 
darling, where he may be both well educated and 
supported.” 

Shaftesbury reveals to us an illustration of George 
the First’s reign. “In latter days,” he says, “it has 
become the fashion to eat with less ceremony and 
method. Every one chooses to carve for himself. 
The learned manner of dissection is out of request ; 
and a certain method of cookery has been introduced, 
by which the anatomical science of the table is en- 
tirely set aside. Ragouts and fricassées are the reign- 
ing dishes, in which everything is so dismembered, 
and thrown out of all order and form, that no part of 
the mess can properly be divided or distinguished 
from another.” But we have come to a period 
that demands a chapter to itself; and even with that 
implied space, we can hardly do justice to the table 
traits of the last century. 


Table Traits of the Last Century 


Wuen Mr. Chute intimated to Horace Walpole 
that his “temperance diet and milk” had rendered 
him stupid, Walpole protested pleasantly against such 
an idea. ‘I have such lamentable proofs,” he says, 
“every day, of the stupefying qualities of beef, ale, 
and wine, that I have contracted a most religious 
veneration for your spiritual nouriture. Only imagine 
that I here (Houghton), every day, see men who are 
mountains of roast beef, and only seem just roughly 
hewn out into the outlines of human form, like the 
giant rock at Pratolino! I shudder when I see them 
brandish their knives, in act to carve, and look on 
them as savages that devour one another. I should 
not stare at all more than I do, if yonder alderman, 
at the end of the table, was to stick his fork into his 
jolly neighbour’s cheek, and cut a brave slice of 
brown and fat. Why, I’ll swear I see no difference 
between a country gentleman and a sirloin; whenever 
the first laughs, or the latter is cut, there run out just 
the same streams of gravy! Indeed, the sirloin does 
not ask quite so many questions. I have an aunt 
here, a family piece of goods, an old remnant of in- 
quisitive hospitality and economy, who, to all intents 
and purposes, is as beefy as her neighbours.” 


Certainly, I think it may be considered that, in diet 
300 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 301 


and in principles, we have improved upon the fashion 
of one hundred and ten years ago; and, perhaps, 
the improvement in principles is a consequence of 
that in diet. There was a profound meaning in the 
point of faith of some old religionists, that the 
stomach was the seat of the soul. However this may 
be, the “beefy” men of Walpole’s time had, occa- 
sionally, strange ideas touching honour. Old Nourse, 
for instance, challenged Lord Windsor, who refused 
to fight him, either with sword or pistols, on the plea 
that Nourse was too aged a man. Thereupon Nourse, 
in a fit of vexation and indigestion, went home from 
the coffee-house and cut his throat! “It was strange, 
yet very English,” says Walpole. Old Nourse must 
have had Japanese blood in him. At Jeddo, whena 
nobleman feels himself slighted, he walks home, takes 
the sharpest knife he can find, and rips himself open, 
from the wmdbzlicus to the trachea! 

Quite as certainly, strong diet and weak principles 
prevailed among our great-grandsires and their dames. 
Lady Townshend fell in love with the rebel Lord 
Kilmarnock, from merely seeing him at his trial. 
She forthwith cast off her old lover, Sir Harry Nis- 
bett, and became “as yellow as a jonquil” for the 
new object of her versatile affection. She even took 
a French master, in order that she might forget the 
language of “the bloody English!”’ She was not 
so afflicted, but that she could bear the company of 
gay George Selwyn to dine with her ; and he, believ- 
ing that her passion was feigned, joked with her, on 
what was always a favourite topic with himself, — 
the approaching execution. Lady Townshend forth- 
with rushed from the table in rage and tears, and 


302 TABLE TRAITS 


Mr. Selwyn finished the bottle with “Mrs. Dorcas, 
her woman,” who begged of him to help her to a 
sight of the execution! Mrs. Dorcas had a friend 
who had promised to protect her, and, added she, 
“T can lie in the Tower the night before!” This is 
a pretty dining-room interior of the last century. As 
for George Selwyn, that most celebrated of the 
diners-out of a hundred years ago, he said the pleas- 
antest thing possible at dessert, after the execution 
of Lord Lovat. Some ladies asked him how he 
could be such a barbarian as to see the head cut off, 
« Nay,” said he, “if that was such a crime, I am 
sure I have made amends; for I went to see it 
sewed on again!” ‘George,’ says Walpole, “never 
thinks but @ la féte tranchée; he came to town 
t’other day to have a tooth drawn, and told the man 
that he would drop his handkerchief for the signal.” 
Selwyn kept his powers bright by keeping good 
company; while Gray the poet was but indifferent 
society, from living reclusely, added to a natural 
_ turn for melancholy, and ‘a little too much dignity.” 
Young, a greater poet than Gray, was as brilliant in 
conversation as Selwyn himself, as long as, like Sel- 
wyn, he polished his wit by contact with the world. 
When he dined with Garrick, Quin, and George Anne 
Bellamy, he was the sprightliest of the four; but 
when he took to realising the solitude he had epically 
praised, Young, too, became a proser. Quin loved 
good living as much as he did sparkling conversa- 
tion; and Garrick, the other guest noticed above, has 
perfectly delineated Quin the epicure in the following 
epigram, as he subsequently did Quin, the man and 
brother of men, in his epitaph in Bath Abbey: 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 303 


“ A plague on Egypt’s art! I say; 
Embalm the dead, on senseless clay 
Rich wines and spices waste! 
Like sturgeon, or like brawn, shall I, 
Bound in a precious pickle, lie, 
Which I shall never taste? 


“Let me embalm this flesh of mine 
With turtle fat and Bordeaux wine, 
And spoil th’ Egyptian trade. 
Than Humphrey’s duke more happy I; 
Embalm’d alive, old Quin shall die, 
A mummy, ready made.” 


A good many female mummies were prepared 
during the last century after a similar receipt. Wit- 
ness Walpole’s neighbour at Strawberry Hill, ‘an 
attorney's wife, and much given to the bottle. By 
the time she has finished that and daylight, she 
grows afraid of thieves, and makes her servants fire 
minute-guns out of the garret windows. The divine 
Asheton,” he proceeds, “ will give you an account of 
the astonishment we were in last night at hearing 
guns. I began to think that the duke (of Cumber- 
land) had brought some of his defeats from Flan- 
ders.” 

Young denounces in his “Satires,” both tea and 
wine, as abused by the fair sex of the last century. 
In Memmia he paints Lady Betty Germain, in the 
lines I have quoted under the head of “Tea;”’ and 
then, hurling his shafts of satire at that which another 
poet has described as “cups which cheer, but not 
inebriate,” he adds: 


‘‘ Tea! how I tremble at thy fatal stream! 
As Lethe, dreadful to the love of fame. 


304 TABLE TRAITS 


What devastations on thy banks are seen! 

What shades of mighty names which once have been! 
A hecatomb of characters supplies 

Thy painted altar’s daily sacrifice. 

Hervey, Pearce, Blount, aspersed by thee, decay, 

As grains of finest sugars melt away, 

And recommend thee more to mortal taste: 

Scandal’s the sweetener of a female feast.” 


And then, adverting to the ladies who, like Wal- 
pole’s “attorney’s wife,’ were much given to the 
bottle, the poet exclaims: 


“But this inhuman triumph shall decline, 
And thy revolting Naiads call for wine; 
Spirits no longer shall serve under thee, 
But reign in thy own cup, exploded Tea! 
Citronia’s nose declares thy ruin nigh; 
And who dares give Citronia’s nose the lie? 
The ladies long at men of drink exclaim’d, 
And what impair’d both health and virtue blamed. 
At length, to rescue man, the generous lass 
Stole from her consort the pernicious glass. 
As glorious as the British queen renown’d, 
Who suck’d the poison from her husband’s wound.” 


Manners and morals generally go hand in hand; 
but those of the ladies satirised by Young were not 
so bad as those of the French princesses of a few 
years before, when they and duchesses were so 
addicted to drinking, that no one thought it a vice, 
since royalty and aristocracy practised it. The Dau- 
phine of Burgundy is indeed praised by her biogra- 
phers as not drinking to any great excess during the 
three last years of her life. But this was exceptional. 
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TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 305 


like dragoons; but the latter were unruly in their 
cups, whereas the old lady carried her liquor dis- 
creetly. Henrietta, Madame de Montespan, and the 
Princess di Monaco, were all addicted, more or less, 
to tippling. The Duchess de Bourbon and her Grace 
of Chartres added smoking to their other boon qual- 
ities; and the Dauphin once surprised them with 
pipes which had been cudlotés for them by common 
soldiers of the Swiss Guard! -In France, devotion 
even was made a means toward drunkenness. Bun- 
gener tells us, in his “Trois Sermons sous Louis 
XV.,” that M. Basquiat de la House owned a small 
estate in Gascony, which produced a wine which no 
one would buy.. Being at Rome, as secretary of an 
embassy, he procured a body from the catacombs, 
which he christened by the name of a saint venerated 
in his part of the country. The people received it 
with great pomp. A /éfe was appointed by the Pope, 
a fair by the government, and the wine was sold by 
hogsheads! It was a wine as thin as the beverage 
which Mr. Chute lived on when he had the gout, 
at which time, says Walpole, ‘“‘he keeps himself very 
low, and lives upon very thin ink.” 

There was a good deal of latitude of observation 
and conversation at the dinner-tables of the last cen- 
tury ; and the letter-writer I have just cited affords 
us ample evidence of the fact. John Stanhope, of 
the Admiralty, he informs us, “was sitting by an 
old Mr. Curzon, a nasty wretch, and very covetous ; 
his nose wanted blowing, and continued to want it; 
at last Mr. Stanhope, with the greatest good breed- 
ing, said, ‘Indeed, sir, if you don’t wipe your nose, 
you will lose that drop.’” 


306 TABLE TRAITS 


A. hundred years ago, Walpole remarked that 
Methodism, drinking, and gambling were all on the 
increase. Of the first he sneeringly says, “It in- 
creases as fast as any religious nonsense did.” Of 
the second he remarks, “ Drinking is at the highest 
wine-mark ;” and he speaks of the third as being so 
violent, that “at the last Newmarket meeting, in the 
rapidity of both gaming and drinking, a bank-bill was 
thrown down, and, nobody immediately claiming it, 
they agreed to give it to a man who was standing 
bye 

There was a love of good eating, as well as of deep 
drinking, even among the upper classes of the last 
century. What a picture of a duchess is that of her 
Grace of Queensberry, posting down to Parson’s 
Green, to tell Lady Sophia Thomas “something of 
importance ;”’ namely, “Take a couple of beefsteaks, 
clap them together as if they were for a dumpling, 
and eat them with pepper and salt: it is the best 
thing you ever tasted! I could not help coming to 
tell you this;” and then she drove back to town. 
And what a picture of a magistrate is that of Field- 
ing, seated at supper, with a blind man, a Drury 
Lane Chloris, and three Irishmen, all eating cold 
mutton and ham from one dish, on a very dirty cloth, 
and “his Worship” refusing to rise to attend to the 
administration of justices’ justice! It is but fair, 
however, to Fielding to add, that he might have had 
better fare had he been more oppressive touching” 
fees. And, besides, great dignitaries set him but an 
indifferent example. Gray, speaking of the Duke of 
Newcastle’s installation at Oxford, remarks, that 
“every one was very gay and very busy in the morn- 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 307 


ing, and very owlish and very tipsy at night. I make 
no exceptions, from the Chancellor to Blewcoat.”’ 
Lord Pembroke, truly, was temperate enough to live 
upon vegetables ; but the diet did not improve either 
his temper or his morals. Ladies —and they were 
not over delicate a century ago— as much dreaded 
sitting near him at dinner, as their daughters and 
granddaughters dreaded to be near the late Duke of 
Cumberland, who was pretty sure to say something 
in the course of dinner expressly to embarrass them. 
The vegetarian Lord Pomfret was so blasphemous at 
tennis, that the Primate of Ireland, Dr. George Stone, 
was compelled to leave off playing with him. For 
primates handled the rackets then, as Pope and cardi- 
nals do now the cue. Pio Nono and the expertest 
of the Sacred College play /a poule at billiards, after 
dinner, with the view of keeping down the good pon- 
tiff's obesity. This is almost as curious a trait as 
that of Taafe, the Irishman, who, conceiving himself 
to have been insulted at a dinner, and not being then 
able, as a Roman Catholic, to wear a sword, changed 
his religion, and ran his adversary through the body. 
The confusion of ideas which prompted a man to 
follow a particular faith, in order that he might com- 
mit murder, was something like that which influenced 
the poor woman who, suddenly becoming pious, after 
hearing a sermon from Rowland Hill, went to a book- 
stall, and stole a Bible. 
I have noticed the love of good eating, and the 
coarseness connected with it. There was also a 
coarse economy attendant on it. The Duchess of 
Devonshire would call out to the duke, when both 
were presiding at supper after one of their assemblies, 


308 TABLE TRAITS 


“ Good God, duke! don’t cut the ham ; nobody will eat 
any;’’ and then she would relate the circumstances 
of her private ménage to her neighbour: “When 
there’s only my lord and I, besides a pudding, we 
have always a dish of roast,’’ —no very dainty fare 
for a ducal pair. Indeed, there was much want of 
daintiness, and of dignity, too, in many of those with 
whom both might have been looked for as a posses- 
sion. Lord Coventry chased his lady round the 
dinner-table, and scrubbed the paint off her cheeks 
with a napkin. The Duke and Duchess of Hamil- 
ton were more contemptible in their pomposity than 
their Graces of Devonshire were in their plainness. 
At their own house they walked in to dinner before 
their company, sat together at the upper end of their 
own table, ate together off one plate, and drank to 
nobody beneath the rank of earl. It was, indeed, a 
wonder that they could get any one of any rank to 
dine with them at all. But, in point of dinners, peo- 
ple are not “nice”? even now. Dukes very recently 
dined with a railway potentate, in hopes of profiting 
by the condescension ; and duchesses heard, without 
a smile, that potentate’s lady superbly dismiss them 
with an “Az reservoir!’ —an expression, by the 
way, which is refined, when compared with that 
taught by our nobility, a hundred years ago, to the 
rich Bohemian Countess Chamfelt ; namely, “ D—n 
you!” and “ Kiss me!” but it was apologetically said 
of her, that she never used the former but upon the 
miscarriage of the latter. This was at a time when 
vast assemblies were followed by vast suppers, vast 
suppers by vast drinking, and when nymphs and 
swains reached home at dawn with wigs, like 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 309 


Ranger’s in the comedy, vastly battered, and not 
very fit to be seen. 

Pope, in the last century, moralised, with effect, on 
the deaths of the dissolute Buckingham and the avari- 
cious Cutler; and the avarice of Sir John was per- 
haps more detestable than any extravagance that is 
satirised by Pope, or witticised by Walpole. But 
Sir John Cutler was ingenious in his thrift. This 
rich miser ordinarily travelled on horseback and 
alone, in order to avoid expense. On reaching his 
inn at night, he feigned indisposition, as an excuse 
for not taking supper. He would simply order the 
hostler to bring a little straw to his room, to put in 
his boots. He then had his bed warmed, and got into 
it, but only to get out of it again as soon as the servant 
had left the room. Then, with the straw in his 
boots and the candle at his bedside, he kindled a 
little fire, at which he toasted a herring which he 
drew from his pocket. This, with a bit of bread 
which he carried with him, and a little water from 
the jug, enabled the lord of countless thousands to 
sup at a very moderate cost. 

Well, this sordidness was less culpable, perhaps, 
than slightly overstepping income by giving assem- 
blies and suppers. At the latter there was at least 
wit, and as much of it as was ever to be found at 
Madame du Deffand’s, where, by the way, the peo- 
ple did not sup. “Last night, at my Lady Hervey’s,” 
says Walpole, “Mrs. Dives was expressing great 
panic about the French,” who were said to be pre- 
paring to invade England. “My Lady Rochford, 
looking down on‘ her fan, said, with great softness, 
‘T don’t know; I don’t think the French are a sort 


310 TABLE TRAITS 


of people that women need be afraid of.’”” This was 
more commendable wit than that of Madame du 
Deffand herself, who, as I have previously remarked, 
made a whole assembly laugh, at Madame de Mar- 
chais’s, when her old lover was known to be dying, by 
saying as she entered, “He is gone; and wasn't it 
lucky? He died at six, or I could not possibly have 
shown myself here to-night.” 

Our vain lady wits, however, too often lacked 
refinement. “If I drink any more,” said Lady 
Coventry at Lord Hertford’s table, “if I drink 
any more, I shall be ‘muckibus.’” “Lord!” said 
Lady Mary Coke, “what is that?” “Oh,” was the 
reply, “it is Irish for sentimental!” In those days 
there were no wedding-breakfasts: the nuptial ban- 
quet was a dinner, and bride and bridegroom saw it 
out. Walpole congratulates himself that, at the mar- 
riage of his niece Maria, “there was neither form nor 
indecency, both which generally meet on such oc- 
casions. They were married,’ he adds, “at my 
brother’s in Pall Mall, just before dinner, by Mr. 
Keppel; the company, my brother, his son, Mrs. 
Keppel and Charlotte, Lady Elizabeth Keppel, Lady 
Betty Waldegrave, and I. We dined there; the 
earl and new countess got into their post-chaise 
at eight o’clock, and went to Navestock alone, where 
they stay till Saturday night.” Walpole gives in- 
stances enough—and more than enough — where 
matters did not go off so becomingly. Lords and 
ladies were terribly coarse in sentiment and expres- 
sion; and the women were often worse than the men. 
‘Miss Pett,” says the writer whom I have so often 
quoted, “has dismissed Lord Buckingham: fan? 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 311 


mieux pour luz! She damns her eyes that she will 
marry some captain: tant mieux pour elle.” This is 
a sample of table traits in 1760; and it was long be- 
fore manners and morals improved. The example 
was not of the best sort even in high places. The 
mistress of Alfieri dined at court, as widow of the 
Pretender; and Madame du Barry was publicly 
feasted by our potential lord mayor. 

Some of the women were not only coarse in 
speech, but furies in act, and often sharpers to 
boot. Thus, when “Jemmy Lumley,” in 1761, 
had a party of ladies at his house, with whom, after 
dinner, he played whist, from six at night till noon 
the next day, he lost two thousand pounds, which, 
suspecting knavery, he refused to pay. His an- 
tagonist, Mrs. Mackenzie, subsequently pounced 
upon him in the garden of an inn at Hampstead, 
where he was about to give a dinner to some other 
ladies. The sturdy “Scotchwoman,” as Gray calls 
her, demanded her money, and, on meeting with a 
refusal, she “horsewhipped, trampled, bruised,” and 
served him with worse indignities still, as may be 
seen by the curious, in Gray’s letter to Warton. 
Lumley’s servants only with difficulty rescued their 
master from the fury, who carried a horsewhip be- 
neath her hoop. The gentlemen do not appear to 
have been so generous, in their character of lovers, 
as their French brethren, who ruined themselves for 
“Jes beaux yeux’ of some temporary idol. Miss , 
Ford laughed consumedly at Lord Jersey, for send- 
ing her (“an odd first and only present to a be- 
loved mistress’’) a boar’s head, which, she says, “I 
had often the honour to meet at your lordship’s 


312 TABLE TRAITS 


table before . . . and would have eat it, had it been 
eatable.”’ 

The public are pretty familiar with the Household 
Book of the Earl of Northumberland; and have 
learned much therefrom touching the table traits 
of the early period in which it was written. A later 
earl did not inherit the spirit of organisation which 
influenced his ancestor. “I was to dine at Northum- 
berland House,” says Walpole, in 1765, “and went 
there a little after hour. There I found the countess, 
Lady Betty Mackinsy, Lady Strafford, my Lady Fin- 
later, — who was never out of Scotland before, —a 
tall lad of fifteen, her son, Lord Drogheda, and Mr. 
Worseley. At five” (which is conjectured to have 
been the hour of extreme fashion a century ago) 
‘arrived Mr. Mitchell, who said the lords had com- 
menced to read the Poor Bill, which would take, at 
least, two hours, and, perhaps, would debate it after- 
ward. We concluded dinner would be called for; it 
not being very precedented for ladies to wait for 
gentlemen. No such thing! Six o’clock came, — 
seven o'clock came, — our coaches came! Well, we 
sent them away ; and excuses were, we were engaged. 
Still, the countess’s heart did not relent, nor uttered 
a syllable of apology. We wore out the wind and 
the weather, the opera and the play, Mrs. Cornely’s 
and Almack’s, and every topic that would do in a 
formal circle. We hinted, represented —in vain. 
The clock struck eight. My lady, at last, said she 
would go and order dinner; but it was a good half- 
hour before it appeared. We then sat down to a 
table of fourteen covers; but, instead of substantials, 
there was nothing but a profusion of plates, striped 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 313 


red, green, and yellow, — gilt plate, blacks, and uni- 
forms. My Lady Finlater, who never saw those em- 
broidered dinners, nor dined after three, was famished. 
The first course stayed as long as possible, in hopes 
of the lords; so did the second. The dessert at last 
arrived, and the middle dish was actually set on, 
when Lord Finlater and Mr. Mackay arrived! 
Would you believe it ?— the dessert was remanded, 
and the whole first course brought back again! Stay 
—TI have not done! Just as this second first course 
had done its duty, Lord Northumberland, Lord 
Strafford, and Mackinsy came in; and the whole 
began a third time. Then the second course, and 
the dessert! I thought we should have dropped 
from our chairs with fatigue and fumes. When 
the clock struck eleven, we were asked to return 
to the drawing-room, and take tea and coffee; but I 
said I was engaged to supper, and came home to 
bed!” This dinner may be contrasted with another 
given, at a later period, by a member of the same 
house. The nobleman in question was an Earl 
Percy, who was in Ireland with his regiment, — the 
Fifth Infantry ; and who, after much consideration, 
consented to give a dinner to the officers in garrison 
at Limerick. The gallant, but cautious, earl ordered 
the repast at a tavern, specifying that it should be for 
fifty persons, at eighteen pence per head. The 
officers heard of the arrangement, and they ordered 
the landlord to provide a banquet at a guinea per 
head, promising to pay the difference, in the event of 
their entertainer declining to do so. When the ban- 
quet was served, there was but one astonished and 
uncomfortable individual at the board; and that was 


314 TABLE TRAITS 


the earl himself, who beheld a feast for the gods, and 
‘heard himself gratefully complimented upon the ex- 
cellence both of viands and wines. The astonished earl 
experienced an easily understood difficulty in returning 
thanks when his health was drunk with an enthusiasm 
that bewildered him ; and, on retiring early, he sought 
out the landlord, in order to have a solution of an 
enigma that sorely puzzled him. Boniface told the un- 
adorned and unwelcome truth ; and the inexperienced 
young earl, acknowledging his mistake, discharged the 
bill with a sigh on himself, and a cheque on his banker. 

A host, after all, may appear parsimonious without 
intending to be so. ‘This wine,” said one of this 
sort to the late Mr. Pocock of Bristol, who had been 
dining with him, “costs me six shillings a bottle!” - 
“Does it?” asked the guest, with a quaint look of 
gay reproof, “then pass it round, and let me have 
another sixpenn’orth !”’ 

But, to return to our table traits of the last cen- 
tury. In 1753, on the 4th of June, there was an 
installation of Knights of the Garter, at Windsor 
Castle, followed by a grand dinner, and a ball. It 
would seem as if the public claimed the right of 
seeing the spectacle for which they had to pay; for 
we read that “the populace attempted several times 
to force their way into the hall where the knights 
were at dinner, against the guards, on which some 
were cut and wounded, and the guards fired several 
times on them, with powder, to deter them, but with* 
out effect, till they had orders to load with ball, which 
made them desist.” This is an ill-worded paragraph 
from the papers of the day; but it is a graphic illus- 
tration of the manners of the period. j 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 315 


These few samples of what society was in the last 
century, would suffice alone to show that it was sadly 
out of joint. What caused it? Any one who will 
take the trouble to go carefully through the columns 
of the ill-printed newspapers of the early part of the 
last century, will find that drunkenness, dissolute- 
ness, and the sword hanging on every fool’s thigh, 
ready to do his bidding, were the characteristics of 
the period. People got drunk at dinners, and then 
slew one another, or in some other way broke the 
law. Lord Mohun and Captain Hall dined together 
before they made their attempt to carry off Mrs. 
Bracegirdle ; and when defeated in their Tarquinlike 
endeavour, they slaughtered poor Will Montford, the 
player, in the public streets, for no better reason 
than that Montford admired the lady, and Hall was 
jealous of the admirer. But neither copious dining, 
nor copious drinking, could make a brave man of 
Mohun. In proof of this, it is only necessary to 
state that before he fought his butchering duel with 
the Duke of Hamilton, he spent the previous night 
feasting and drinking at the Bagnio, which place he 
left in the morning, with his second, Major-General 
M’Carty, as the Postboy remarks, “seized with fear 
and trembling.’ “The dog Mohun,” as Swift 
styled him, was slain, and so was the duke; but it is 
uncertain whether the latter fell by the hand of his 
adversary, or the sword of that adversary’s second. 
A few years later we read of Fulwood, the lawyer, 
going to the play after dinner, drawing upon Beau 
Fielding, running him through, rushing in triumph to 
another house, meeting another antagonist, and get- 
ting slain by him, without any one caring to interfere. 


316 TABLE TRAITS 


In one of the numbers of the Dazly Post for 1726, 
I find it recorded that a bevy of gallants, having joy- 
ously dined or supped together, descended from a 
hackney-coach in Piccadilly, bilked the coachman, 
beat him to a mummy, and stabbed his horses. 
Flushed with victory, they rushed into a neighbour- 
ing public house, drew upon the gallants, terrified 
the ladies, and laughed at the mistress of the estab- 
lishment, who declared that they would bring down 
ruin upon a place noted for “its safety and secrecy.” 
The succeeding paragraph in the paper announces 
to the public that the Bishop of London will preach 
on the following Sunday in Bow Church, Cheapside, 
on the necessity for a reformation of manners! 

The clubs, and especially the “Sword Clubs,” 
with their feastings and fightings, were the chief 
causes that manners were as depraved as they were. © 
After supper, these clubs took possession of the 
town, and held their sword against every man, and 
found every man’s sword against them. The “Bold 
Bucks,” and the “ Hell-Fires,” divided the metropolis 
between them. The latter, a comparatively imnocent 
association, found their simple amusement in mutila- 
ting watchmen and citizens. The “Bold Bucks” 
took for their devilish device, “Blind and Bold 
Love,” and, under it, committed atrocities, the very 
thought of which makes the heart of human nature 
palpitate with horror and disgust. No man could 
become a member who did not denounce the claims 
both of nature and God! They used to assemble 
every Sunday at a tavern, close to the church of St. 
Mary-le-Strand. During divine service, they kept a 
noisy band of horns and drums continually at work ; 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 317 


and, after service, they sat down to dinner, the prin- 
cipal dish at which was a “Holy Ghost pie!” As- 
suredly the sermon of the metropolitan prelate was 
much needed; but, when preached, reformation did 
but very slowly follow, especially in high places. At 
the very end of the century we hear of the Prince of 
Wales dining at the Duke of Queensberry’s, at Rich- 
mond, with the last mistress of Louis XV.; and 
nobody appears to have been scandalised. And this 
was the characteristic of the time; vice was not only 
general, but it did not very seriously offend the few 
exceptional individuals. For the first three-quarters 
of the century the epitaph of that time might have 
been taken from the eulogium passed by a Mayfair 
preacher in his funeral sermon upon Frederick, 
Prince of Wales: “He had no great parts, but he 
had great virtues; indeed, they degenerated into 
vices ; he was very generous; but I hear his gener- 
osity has ruined a great many people; and then his 
condescension was such, that he kept very bad com- 
pany.” 

I have, elsewhere, spoken of some of the roistering 
clubs of the last century; but I cannot refrain from 
adding two other instances here, as examples of the 
table traits of the same period. The Calves’ Head 
Club established itself in Suffolk Street, Charing 
Cross, on the anniversary of the martyrdom of King 
Charles, in the year 1735. The gentlemen members 
had an entertainment of calves’ heads, some of which 
they showed to the mob outside, whom they treated 
with strong beer. In the evening, they caused a 
bonfire to be made before the door, and threw into 
it, with loud huzzas, a calf’s head, dressed up in a 


318 TABLE TRAITS 


napkin. They also dipped their napkins in red wine, 
and waved them from the windows, at the same time 
drinking toasts publicly. The mob huzzaed, as well 
as their fellow brutes of the club; but, at length, to 
show their superior refinement, they broke the win- 
dows ; and at length became so mischievous, that the 
Guards were called in to prevent further outrage. 

The above was, no doubt, a demonstration on the 
part of gentlemen of republican principles. Some 
few years later, a different instance occurs. The 
Monthly Review, May, 1757, mentions that “seven - 
gentlemen dined at a house of public entertainment 
in London, and were supposed to have run as great 
lengths in luxury and expense, if not greater, than 
the same number of persons were ever known to do 
before at a private regale. They afterward played a 
game of cards, to decide which of them should pay 
the bill. It amounted to A481 IIs. 6d.; besides a 
turtle, which was a present to the company.” This 
was certainly a heavy bill, A party of the same 
number at the Clarendon, and with turtle charged in 
the bill, would, in our days, find exceeding difficulty 
in spending more than 45 each. Their grandsires 
expended more than twice as much for a dinner not 
half as good. 

It is only with the present century that old cus- 
toms disappeared ; and, with regard to some of them, 
society is all the better for their disappearance. Even 
plum porridge did not survive the first year of this 
half century ; when the more solid and stable dynasty 
of plum pudding was finally established. Brand re- 
lates, that on Christmas Day, 1801, he dined at the 
chaplain’s table, at St. James’s, “and partook of the 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 319 


first thing served and eaten on that festival, at that 
table, namely, a tureen full of rich, luscious plum- 
porridge. I do not know,” he says, “that the custom 
is anywhere else retained.” The great innovation, 
after this, was in the days of the regent, when oysters 
were served as a prelude to dinner. This fashion 
was adopted by the prince on the recommendation of 
a gentleman of his household, the elder Mr. Watier, 
who brought it with him from France, and added an 
“ experto crede’”’ to his recommendation. This fash- 
ion, however, like others, has passed away; and 

oysters and drams, as overtures to dinner, are things 
- that have fallen into the domain of history. 

There is a custom of these later days, much ob- 
served at Christmas time, which deserves a word of 
notice. I allude to the ‘“‘ Christmas-tree.”’ The cus- 
tom is one, however novel in England, of very ancient 
observance elsewhere. Its birthplace is Egypt. The 
tree there used was the palm; and the ceremony was 
in full force long before the days of Antony and 
Cleopatra. The palm puts forth a fresh shoot every 
month. Its periodical leaves appear as regularly as 
those of Mr. Bentley’s JZzscellany. In the time of 
the winter solstice, when parties were given in an- 
cient Misraim, a spray of this tree, with twelve shoots, 
was suspended, to symbolise the completion of an- 
other year. The custom passed into Italy, where 
the fir-tree was employed for the purposes of cele- 
bration ; and its pyramidal tips were decorated with 
burning candles, in honour of Saturn. This festival, 
the Saturnalia, was observed at the winter solstice, 
from the 17th to the 21st of December, and, during 
its continuance, Davus was as good a man as 


320 TABLE TRAITS 


Chremes. The Sigillaria, days for interchanging 
presents of figures in wax, like those on the Christ- 
mas-tree, followed; and, finally, the Juvenalia, when 
men became “boys with boys,’ matrons turned chil- 
dren once again, and young and old indulged in the 
solemn romps with which the festival closed, and 
which used to mark our own old-fashioned festivities 
at Christmas time. That the Egyptian tree passed 
into Germany, may be seen in the pyramids which 
sometimes there are substituted for the tree. But the 
antique northern mythology has supplied some of the 
observances. The Juel Fesi was the midwinter 
“Wheel Feast;” and the wheel represented the 
circling years, which end but to begin again. The 
yule-log, as we call it, was the wheel-shaped log; in 
front of which was roasted the great boar, —an an- 
imal hateful to the god of the sun, but the flesh of 
which was religiously eaten by his worshippers. At 
this festival presents were made, which were con- 
cealed in wrappers, and flung in at open windows, 
emblematical, we are told, of the good, but as yet 
hidden, things which the opening year had in store. 
The Church generally made selection of the heathen 
festivals for its own holy days. In the early days, 
this was done chiefly to enable Christians to be merry 
without danger to themselves. It would not have 
been safe for them to eat, drink, and rejoice on days 
when pagan governments put on mourning. They 
were glad, then, when these were glad, and feasted 
with them, but holding other celebrations in view. 
Hence the German tree; only, for the sun which 
crowned the Roman tree, in honour of Apollo, the 
Germans place a figure of the Son of God; and, for 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 321 


the Phoebus and his flocks at the foot, they substi- 
tute “the Good Shepherd.” The waxen figures are 
also the szgz//aria, but with more holy impress. The 
Saturnalia have a place in the table joys that attend 
the exhibition of the tree, in presence of which joy is 
supposed to wither. 

In conclusion, I cannot but notice one other table 
custom, which is of Teutonic origin. I allude to the 
Cabinet dinners given by ministers previous to the 
opening of Parliament, and at which the royal speech 
is read, before it is declared in the presence of collect- 
ive wisdom. This, at all events, reminds us of the 
ancient German custom mentioned by Tacitus, who 
tells us that the Teutonic legislators and warriors 
consulted twice, touching every question of impor- 
tance: once, by night, and over the bowl; and once, 
by day, when they were perfectly sober. Of course, 
I would not insinuate that ministers could possibly 
indulge too fondly over their cups, like the senators 
of the Hercynian forest; and yet Viscount Sid- 
mouth’s vice, as Lord Holland tells us, ‘‘ was wine ;”’ 
and we have heard even of grave lord stewards 
so drunk as to pull down the monarchs they held by 
the hand, and should have supported. The last un- 
fortunate official who so offended, should have craft- 
ily qualified his wine with water ; and the mention of 
that subject reminds me of the origin of wine and 
water, of which I will say a few words, after adding 
one or two more traits of table manners. 

I have spoken, in another page, of the unlucky 
exclamation touching haddock, which caused the per- 
petual exile of Poodle Byng from Belvoir. There 
was, however, no offence meant. How different was 


322 TABLE TRAITS 


the case with that impudent coxcomb, Brummell, 
who managed to be the copper-captain of fashion in 
London, when the true captains were fighting their 
country’s battles! When Brummell was living al- 
most on the charity of Mr. Marshall, he was one of 
a dinner-party at that gentleman’s house, whither he 
took with him, according to his most impertinent 
custom, one of his favourite dogs. The “ Beau” 
had, during dinner, helped himself to the wing of a 
roasted capon stuffed with truffles. He chose to 
fancy that the wing was tough, and, delicately seiz- 
ing the end of it with a napkin-covered finger and 
thumb, he passed it under the table to his dog, with 
the remark, “ Here, Atout! try if you can get your 
teeth through this; for I’ll be d—d if I can.” Not 
less ungratefully impudent was this gentleman-beg- 
gar on another occasion. A French family had given 
a dinner entirely on his account. It was perfect in 
its way. The ortolans came from Toulouse, the 
salmon was from the waters in the neighbourhood of 
Rouen, and the company most select. A friend, en- 
countering him next day, asked how the dinner had 
gone off. Brummell lifted up his hands, shook his 
head in a deprecatory manner, and said, “ Don’t ask 
me, my good fellow; but, poor man! he did his 
best.” 

The two most recent examples of table traits of 
the present century, that I have met with, illustrate 
the two extremes of society ; and as they refer to 
a period of not above a month ago, they will serve, 
not inaptly, to close this section of my series. The 
first example is that afforded by a dinner given at 
Boston, in Lincolnshire, to twenty aged labourers. 


TABLE TRAITS OF THE LAST CENTURY 323 


At this dinner, one of the gentlemen donors of the 
feast gave “The Ladies,” and called on the oc- 
togenarian chairman to return thanks. The old 
president, however, shook his head, with a mixed 
melancholy and cunning air, as if he too well knew 
there was nothing to return thanks for. The vener- 
able “Vice” was then appealed to; but his reply 
was, that the least said about the subject of the toast 
would be the soonest mended. At length, a sprightly 
old man of threescore and ten was requested to 
respond, he having a gay look about him which 
seemed warranting gallantry; but he surprised the 
toast-giver by answering, that “as for t’leddies, he’d 
nowt to say; for his part, he’d never liked ’em.” 
This unchivalrous sentiment awoke, at last, the spirit 
of a strip of a lad who was only sixty-five; and he 
responded to the toast, with a touch of satire, how- 
ever, in his remarks, that left it uncertain whether 
he were so much a champion of the fair sex as the 
company had expected to find in him. The second 
“trait”? of the customs of this country is presented 
by the dinner given in February of the present year, 
by Earl Granville, the guests at which were Lord 
Aberdeen, the Bishop of Oxford, and Mr. Bright. 
There were not such startling contrasts at the recon- 
ciliation dinner which brought Wilkes and Johnson 
together, as at Earl Granville’s unique banquet. The 
host and the premier represented — the first, smiling 
courtesy ; the second, the most frigid severity of a 
freezing civility. But the strongest contrast was in 
the persons of the bishop and the “ friend :” Doctor 
Wilberforce, highest of churchmen, briefest of preach- 
ers, and twice as much curled as the son of Clinias 


324 TABLE TRAITS 


himself ; while Mr. Bright, with every hair as if a 
plummet depended at the end of it, hating the 
Church, but not indifferent to petits patés a la braise, 
must have looked like the vinegar of voluntaryism 
that would not mingle with the oil of orthodoxy. To 
have made this banquet complete, there should have 
been two more guests, — Doctor Cumming and Doc- 
tor Cahill, with appropriate dishes before each: a 
plate of sweetbreads in front of the gentle apostle of 
the Kirk ; and a bowl of blood-puddings opposite the 
surpliced priest who has gained a gloomy notoriety 
by the “glorious idea,” to which I have referred, of 
a massacre of English heretic beef-eaters, by the 
light-dieted holders of Catholic and Continental bayo- 
nets. But Doctor Cahill, it may be hoped, is some- 
thing insane, or would he have deliberately recorded, 
as he did the other day in the Zad/et, that it were 
much better for Romanists to read immoral works 
than the English Bible? His excellent reason is, 
that “the Church” easily forgives immorality, but 
has no mercy for heresy. Well, well; we should not 
like to catch a confessor of this school sitting next 
our daughter at dinner, and intimating that Holy- 
well Street literature was better reading than the 
English version of the Sermon on the Mount. But - 
let us sweeten our imagination with a little wine and 
water. 


END OF VOLUME I, 


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